Belle Isle park staffers say beavers have returned after 100 years
By Christine MacDonald The Detroit News
Beavers are back after an absence of about 100 years, and experts say they’re another sign the Detroit River is coming back.
Park officials discovered the animals’ dens and tell-tale tooth-marked tree stumps in February in the island’s forest-covered canals. But it wasn’t until last week, when a park visitor snapped a cell phone photo of a beaver swimming in the Blue Heron Lagoon, that staffers were convinced.
They believe three beavers are living on the island.
“It’s pretty awesome,” said Keith Flournoy, Belle Isle park manager, after pulling away brush last week to show off one of the dens under a fallen tree. “This is a boost. It’s great to see the animal come back.”
First General Motors and now beavers back in Detroit! This IS good news! Remember we read about beavers at Edison powerplant on the Detroit River in February of 2009. Looking back on the column I wrote when I was just learning about beaver misrepresentations I can see I wasn’t hopeful about their future at the time. I’m happy to see that they swam into good hands. The original report was from Connors Creek, 27 miles away, so about dispersal range. Belle Island is a big, tree covered, wildly perfect place for them to be. Bigger than central park and located between Michigan and Canada. Click on the photo for a great video from the Belle Island Conservancy.
Apparently people have been reporting beaver for years but no one on staff believed it until someone snapped a cell phone shot and they started looking for felled trees. I’m not sure why they’d assume they DON’T have beavers since they are basically across the stream from Toronto. Now they say they are finding ‘dens’ and think three beaver are on the island. I have to admit I am not so sure of their naturalist acumen after reading this…
Only beavers and porcupine cut down trees in the same style, said Richard Kik, a zoo keeper at the Belle Isle Nature Zoo.
Porcupines? The Zoo keeper at the Belle Island Nature Zoo thinks porcupines cut down trees? I can only hope that was a reporter miscommunication or a typo or something. Otherwise I’m very, very worried about the fate of the animals in your care. Do you also thinks beavers eat fish and penguins fly? To be clear, porcupines DO strip bark from trees and eat little branches near the tops. Is that what you mean? But they do not do this…
There is only one animal that does that. And it isn’t pointy.
Well, I’m choosing to be cautiously opptomistic that Belle Island is so enthusiastic at the moment, but I think I’ll just drop them a ‘beaver information care basket’ just in case. In the meantime we should all just enjoy what it’s like when folks enjoy beavers and take them as the watershed compliment that they truly are.
