Kay Sexton – Worth A Dam

A nice [half] Cornish girl with a name like Perryman better pay attention to the news report of an adult beaver in the Tamar. The land of my ancestors is apparently deeply worried about their fruit trees. The reporter seemed surprised that the beaver doesn’t appear to be damming the Tamar, just living in the bank and eating dinner.

Ahh those quaint beaver-mistrustful folk. For all your smugglers, pasties and tin mines, you never learned to wrap a tree? You don’t even need to use wire. Why not build the fitted stone wall your people are famous for? It will keep out the beaver and give you a saturday’s effort to show off your skill.

For the record my grandfather was the son of a Miner in St. Austel who came over to California after the tin business dried up. He spent his youth in Sierra City working in the goldmines and if he saw a beaver or trapped one, I never heard tell of it. For what its worth, I sent this to the reporter:

Kay Sexton’s January 9th report on the meddlesome “Igor” documents the concern that residents have about beavers taking trees. She fails, however, to mention the benefits of beavers to the habitat. Beavers are a keystone species and have been shown to increase songbirds, salmon and other mammals. They are also instrumental in regulating waterflow which is essential for flood and drought management, and will become even more valuable as we face greater climate change. Their tree attacks, while frustrating, are easily controlled through wire wrapping. My grandfather was a tin-miner who migrated from Cornwall as a boy. Nothing would give me greater joy than to help his neighbors understand more about the benefits of beavers in the habitat.

In a related story, an Oakley neighbor made it out to big break for the beaver walk. He mused that Oakley beavers are luckier than Martinez beavers. Hmm, maybe.