All week Peter Smith (of Wildwood in Kent) has been bursting with news he couldn’t talk about on the Save the Free Beavers of the River Tay forum. Now he can finally come clean.
Wonderful news -a proper release probably in a river system, excellent backing from key stakeholders and being led by all the Welsh Wildlife Trusts. Well done to Adrian and all those involved. Lots of stuff on the website including reports etc. We will be helping with importation and the initial release which I am enormously excited about.
See Wales had a ‘JR beaver release’ of sorts last year, with two females added to private fenced land and the usual freaking out from farmers and fishermen reported on the BBC. They would ruin the land! Eat all trees! Destroy the countryside! Rape the women and children! (Well, maybe not that last one.) But they were slow, and steady and patient like only someone who’s waited 500 years for something can be. Since then they’ve been working and collaborating and educating and soothing feathers, and now they get to release an actual mating pair in an actual stream!
Hooray for CYMRU!!!
(And if you knew how hard I worked to find this particular scene on Youtube, you would play it!)
Last night our OWN beavers did NOT disappoint. It seemed to be a ‘coming out party’ for JR who actually crossed the secondary dam and stuck around long enough to photograph for once. Make sure to check out last night’s post, and here’s an additional wonder:
Now before we get started today I have some housekeeping to attend to. Yesterday I received an email from Joe Eaton, a fast friend of the Martinez Beavers and the author of my favorite article ever on the death of the mother beaver for the Berkeley Daily Planet. He said he stopped by to see the dams and thought they were abandoned (very high tide) and when he checked the website didn’t see any discussion of the Martinez Beavers since March! Were they okay?
I though that since a friendly faced didn’t know, you might not know either! You can always check for new sightings under the “sightings” tab on the menu bar on the top of the page. It will tell you what was seen, where, what time, and by whom. Just in case Joe is not the only one who doesn’t know! The sightings page is managed by Worth A Dam champion Lory Bruno whose friendly face you will see at the silent auction booth this summer. Here’s today’s update
May 7th – 6:15am – One beaver was seen above the primary dam and possibly a sighting of another beaver. Not sure if the same one came out but the second one was a bit smaller it seemed.. It came up to the lodge area and went underwater. Seems like there is something going on at the old lodge and there looked like new branches were on the lodge site, which was heavily mudded Saturday morning.CR
Next, our Kentucky Derby watching friends might find it interesting to know that the logo for the Derby was created by none other that the mother of our beloved Ian Timothy (creator of the beaver creek series).His father of course wrote and performed the music for the series. Here’s photographic proof of a very talented family!
You may remember that last week I wrote about the beavers at Silver Lake in CT which Councilman Thorpe described as “wreaking havoc” on the ecosystem. Of course I wrote him about the good that beaver do for the birds and fish and wildlife and he wrote back (in a manner I can only describe as ‘clipped‘) and said he knew all that but that this area was special because of a sewer line. Which, if true, you might have thought he’d mention to the media. Anyway, there’s a nice rebuttal to his alarms this morning
As the Record-Journal’s Richie Rathsack reported, there’s also evidence that the pond, larger now thanks to the beaver work, is more attractive to other wildlife. He also described dozens of trees along the shore with signs of beaver gnawing, as well as small trails left by beavers dragging trees through the woods to the water’s edge.
My strong suspicion is also that the proprietors of this so-called beaver hut are not paying their proper share of property taxes, and the beavers should probably be told that if there’s any vehicle involved that in Connecticut we tax you when you buy one, while you own one and once again when you sell one. Those trails the beavers are building should also be candidates for some sort of review and taxation, I’d wager.
Now let’s head even farther East for our final update. With beaver advocates chipping away at the resistance in the United Kingdom, check out this mornings BBC report on beavers in Wales!
It is thought that beavers, while common in medieval Wales, became extinct by the 16th Century. But Ms Girardi said she believed the beavers remained “keystone species,” whose re-introduction would increase biodiversity.
On a final note it’s Monday so if you’re very, very good you can watch this video from Peter Smith at the Wildwood Trust in England. A very stalwart, enthusiastic member of the Save the Free Beavers of the River Tay died two weeks ago, Mike Johnston. So Peter very nobly made sure that one of these kits was named after him. I guess its theoretically possibly you might see something cuter in your entire lifetime, but it surely isn’t likely! Enjoy!
