When a beaver leaves a scent mound it’s more complicated than just leaving your purse on a the chair next to you to indicate “This seat is taken“. It tells other beavers both who’s already there but also their gender and whether they are looking for a mate. It’s like leaving a magic purse that says “I’m married, I’m still of childbearing age, But I’m not interested in a new mate, and I’m happily married so go away.”{
Which always shamed me because in 10 years of watching and filming beavers in our creek I never ever saw one scent mound ever. I brought in beaver experts from around the world and they never saw one either. Which always made me feel like a failure, or that our beavers weren’t doing their job. Or maybe that they weren’t real beavers.
Well yesterday I had a wonderful chat with Pam from the beaver detective movie and SHE said that the for the first two years she was watching beavers on Longfellow creek she never saw one EITHER.
For the first two years I didn’t even find a scent mound. Then after a death of an adult female, there was an exodus and lots of scent mounds in the most downstream reach –
So do you know what this means?
It’s likely I didn’t see scent mounds in Martinez because our beavers didn’t NEED them because no other beaver was trying to move into our creek ! Because in 2007 the beaver population was still so decimated that there was zero competition. It means Martinez really did change the beaver population of the bay area.
I have been thinking hard about that, And you should too.
