Many many moons ago, the Martinez Beavers were contacted by a producer for Scott Pelley on CBS, She was interested in filming our beavers and coming out to do a segment. Sounds wonderful right? It would have been a game changer for our story and for urban beavers everywhere. I saved her email and we kept in touch. Alas it got delayed, rescheduled, bumped down the road and then in 2015 all the kits died. Scott Pelley lost his job and we lost our beavers and it never ever happened.

Sigh. Urban beavers and Martinez could have been BIG.

Well CBS finally got their beavers, and its such beautiful footage I don’t even mind that it wasn’t ours.

Nature up close: Beavers, the master engineers

One of the first places we discovered in the Tetons 45 years ago was Schwabacher Landing, a beautiful spot on a branch of the Snake River where people would launch boats to fish and float the Snake. It is a popular spot for Teton sunset shots and the occasional wedding. (We’ve seen two weddings there recently. A note to brides: The ground is all dirt, no pavement. High, spiky heeled shoes are not a good idea!)

They don’t launch boats there now, because this branch is now almost completely cut off from the main river and no longer gets enough water to float a boat. That seems really strange to me, that I’ve have lived long enough to see a river change course.

Not only has the river changed, but beavers have changed Schwabacher as well. When we first saw it, there was just one huge beaver dam. It was well over 50 yards long and it was so wide we walked on it with ease. It used to be one of the photographer’s favorite places to come to get a nice reflection of the Tetons in the beaver pond.

Of course! Now everyone has a picture of beaver tongues. It’s become so yesterdays news,Judy. But I like the other stuff. It’s first class!

That long dam is gone, too. Several generations of beavers ate all the willows, aspens and cottonwoods in that area. Once they had nothing to eat, they disappeared years ago. Then, spring floods destroyed their dam. Now the willows and cottonwoods have re-grown, and new beavers moved in. Their dam blueprints were different from past generations’, because the current residents have created a series of 10 dams and two lodges, instead of the former one big dam and lodge.

As they built the newer dams, the beavers created a series of ponds – perfect habitat for trout, ducks, muskrats, moose and frogs, as well as willows and cottonwoods. Beavers are a keystone species because without them many of the above species would not be able to survive there. They literally create habitat for those organisms. Just like an arch will collapse without its keystone, if a keystone species disappears, so do many of the plants and animals that survive in the habitat they create.

Nicely done! That’s what I call giving credit where credit is due. Of course they deserve high praise for building and maintaining 10 dams at once. I especially love how if you watch the video you can see the path the beavers take over the dam is well worn. The Gap! Just like we had in Martinez! Come to think of it, before the beavers built the secondary dams we didn’t have one. Maybe its a byproduct of all the upkeep they have to do?

Beavers are fascinating to watch, especially the babies. They are perfectly capable of diving down and getting their own lunch (willow branches that adult beavers store at the bottom of the pond), but some seem to prefer begging, or even stealing from their elders.

In the last few years the adults have cut down all of the willows close to their dams and lodges, so they must go downstream a good ways to get more. Eventually they will eat all the willows in the area and will have to move. But in the meantime we will enjoy them going about their busy lives collecting willow, taking willows back to their lodge, reinforcing their dams, and slapping their tails on the water when they aren’t happy.

Ahh Judith, we could be friends. Any woman who spends hours and years watching beavers and learning about them is already a friend of mine! Thanks for reminding us so pleasantly of  of the many happy hours we spent at the dam, watching beavers work or chew or groom or do things that seemed mysterious but made sense later on.

I’m sure I learned more from watching than I ever learned from reading.