Yesterday’s cold weather made me grateful that our beavers at least don’t have to worry about their pitiful pond freezing solid. Beavers in colder climates rely on the deeper water to stay unfrozen so they can get access to the lodge and reach their food caches. Once the surface water freezes solid they can’t get out until it thaws! Ours practically live on easy street – er, creek. This is a nice explanation of what those beavers do to get through the winter from the University of Wyoming.
Not much beaver news today but yesterday I was at work in the salt mines and saw that my name had been dropped on facebook – turns out Michael Howie of Fur-bearer Defenders radio was looking for someone to talk beavers and ecology for 10 minutes and someone I barely know said “Heidi Perryman is the obvious choice!”. Ha. (Only 10 minutes?)
I don’t know if we connected fast enough for his timeline, but its nice to be mentioned!
And just so you know I’m not the only crazy one in the family, this is what my nieces are up to in San Mateo where they received a contract to Yarn Bomb the city. Here are some pictures from from the Mercury News, and this is the explanation on the city’s website. Isn’t that awesome?
Fiber artist Lorna Watt attaches a hand knit sweater around a tree on 3rd Avenue in San Mateo, Calif., on Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2013. The Downtown Art Project paired vlolunteers from sponsor United American Bank with local artists to install the sweaters on 35 trees and saftey pylons …
This sure makes me think the mom beaver memorial might need a sweater….
One of my favorite comediennes, Paula Poundstone, used to do a bit about the irony of Columbus claiming to discover America when there were already a bunch of people living there. When as an industrious student she had raised this point to her teacher she had said “Yes but he was discovering it FOR SPAIN”. As in it may have been important to all these other folks but Spain didn’t know about it. Paula would talk about how off-putting that might be, sitting alone in your apartment and having someone ride up with a flag and “discover” it for Spain, and how that might feel.
Which is kind of how I felt when I read this article from Wyoming yesterday.
This is one of many dams built in the Pole Mountain Unit of the Medicine Bow National Forest. Courtesy photo
Hundreds of beavers live in the Pole Mountain area, changing the landscape each time they build a dam and flood a meadow.
As the landscape changes under their watch, so do the plants, wildlife and fisheries. Matt Hayes, a University of Wyoming graduate student, found a way to quantify some of those changes for his thesis project, which he completed in November. Hayes’ advisor was associate professor Scott Miller.
The project was funded by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.
“A lot of times we focus on beavers being negative, but when managing Pole Mountain, the beavers are instrumental to these fluctuating changes that are happening in riparian areas,” Hayes said. “You have to have those changes throughout the system to have the healthy system we have up there.”
Well, alright then! It turns out beavers are helpful in Wyoming too! Sorry, that’s overgeneralizing, they’re helpful on Pole mountain in Wyoming. Better do other graduate research on every mountain in the state to make sure it applies. I mean we certainly can’t apply research from Alberta and New Mexico and Maine and Alaska to someplace like Wyoming. It might be totally different.
Hayes said beavers might be a possible management tool when looking at increasing winter forage or rejuvenating aspen growth.
Beaver ponds hold snowmelt for long into the summer, keeping storm run-off from flooding downstream, plus they contribute to the quality of fishing in Pole Mountain.
“Without beaver ponds, there wouldn’t be any fishing habitat,” he said.
Alright then. Kill the fatted calf or whatever. Late to the table is still at the table! Beaver Festival Wyoming anyone?
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This appeared yesterday from Kate Lundquist of the OAEC, shown here watching beavers in the black hat on the footbridge. Enjoy!
