The Exeter study has been making waves all around the science community. Now it stopped by our friends in Vancouver to make it’s point with the newly most famous urban beavers on the scene at the Olympic Village.

Beaver dams can filter pollution and sediment from water, study says

Living alongside nature’s engineers can present both challenges and opportunities, say B.C. wildlife experts.

VANCOUVER—Beaver dams are natural filters for the waterways they inhabit, reducing sediment in rivers and soil erosion from surrounding areas, according to new research from the University of Exeter and Devon Wildlife Trust.

But experts say it’s unlikely we’ll be installing beaver lodges upstream from our water fountains any time soon, given how often beaver engineering and human engineering are at odds with one another.

Adam T. Ford, the Canada Research Chair in Wildlife Restoration Ecology, said the human project of changing wild places into urban space renders nearby ecosystems less able to rebound from beavers’ natural appetites.

Roughly nine colonies of beavers live in the City of Vancouver — approximately 45 to 50 animals — with many more spread throughout the lower mainland.

Oh how I wish there was anyone in Contra Costa who was tracking the numbers of beavers living here, and could count how many of them there were. (I mean other than us, that is).

Nick Page, a biologist with the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation, said beavers have begun to reclaim territories around the city they haven’t inhabited in 50 — and in some cases 80 — years. He called it part of the “re-wilding” of Vancouver.

Page said while beavers’ habitats play an important role in carbon-capture and help create wetland homes for other species, Vancouverites seem to value the sight of the animal the most.

“Seeing a beaver is a unique thing,” he said, adding creatures such as herons, eagles and orcas make people feel connected to the wild from within city limits.

“All these (animals) are points of contact with nature in a very urban city, and people really value these things.”

Hurray for urban beavers! And the special biologists who recognize the powerful impact contact with wildlife in your own city (and correspondingly contact with other people who have also had contact with that wildlife) can have. If there was one thing we learned in Martinez and that the city council should have learned. It was this.

Jesse Zeman, director of fish and wildlife restoration with BC Wildlife Federation, said beavers, like any other natural force with the power to disrupt human habitats, can teach us a valuable lesson about how we live in balance with our ecosystem.

“There’s the thought of wildlife, and then there’s integrating with wildlife,” he said, “and sometimes those two things are very different.”

Because human and beavers now find themselves in conflict when making homes in the same spaces, Zeman said humans might ask themselves whether we need as much space as we think we do Through a certain lens, he added, the issue becomes less about beaver-management, and more about managing ourselves.

“It seems like over time,” he said, “what we’re kind of learning is that some of these natural processes can actually be beneficial.”

You don’t say! You don’t say! You don’t say!

Oh it is music to my ears to read sentences like these that I have been repeating in a vacuum for the past 11 years. In Martinez we found out that having beavers move into your city makes you ~~damned~~ er dammed lucky! May your words roll down hill to all the dark places where cities wouldn’t imagine cooperating with beavers. And may they make a difference to the visibility of urban wildlife for years and decades to come.

Hey, what are you doing June 30th? Judy and Jim Atkinson from nearby Port Moody just booked their flight to come to the Martinez Beaver Festival and we’d love to have you.

Honestly when I see articles about the social impact of urban beavers I always think of this:

That Dam Meeting! from Heidi Perryman on Vimeo.

5 ways Vancouver is bringing more wildlife back to the city

The Vancouver Park Board biodiversity strategy is starting to take root, one year after the wide-ranging plan was approved to bring wildlife back to the city.

“There’s a social aspect to nature in the city — people want to be able to experience it as part of their daily lives,” said Nick Page, a biologist with the park board.

1. Salt marsh restoration in New Brighton Park

Vancouver has drastically altered its shoreline to make more space for industry and housing. But in New Brighton Park on Burrard Inlet, Port Metro Vancouver and the park board are working to remove fill that was placed there in the 1960s and restore a tidal salt marsh. The aim is to restore a habitat that once supported clam beds, juvenile salmon and shore birds.

4. Create wildlife corridors

To thrive, wildlife needs to be able to move around the city, Page said. So finding ways to make corridors through the city — like the still-under-design Arbutus Greenway — is also an important part of the strategy.

5. Return of the wild

One way to measure the success of biodiversity efforts is when animals come back to areas they left decades ago. Beavers are a common sight in Stanley Park — but recently they returned to Charleson Park in south False Creek. Page would like to see the return of smaller predators such as the American marten because that would signal the ecosystem is healthy enough to support the full food chain. He acknowledges humans and animals can come into conflict in the city. But “I think we can co-exist. Our alternatives are much more difficult and probably unsuccessful in terms of trying to manage or remove [animals].”

Vancouver is doing an excellent job thanks in part to this man who can definitely see the forest for the trees. Nick Park is exactly the kind of biologist we all want working in our cities, and we’re thrilled that he is a positive force for beavers in the region.

We should be working with biologists like Mr. Park to teach us to value what is right in front of us. Whether it’s baby ducks OR beavers. Say it with me now:
“Because, in the end we will conserve only what we love;
we will love only what we understand;
and we will understand only what we are taught.”
(Baba Dioum, 1968.)