Oh okay, beaver news is making waves finally in California and Oregon and New Mexico and Illinois. But Ohio? OHIO? In Farm and Dairy no less!
They were also able to witness the release of a 1-year-old male beaver who had been cared for by Fran and Ron Kitchen, of Operation Orphan Wildlife Rehabilitation, Inc., located at their home in Akron.
The beaver was a bit intimidated by the crowd of young people, so he hung around the person he knew on shore. When the students began boarding the buses, he finally ventured into the marsh and began swimming around.
He climbed onto a tree stump that had been covered with dirt and mud by another beaver. “When he sniffed it, his tail slammed down with a very loud whack,” Fran said. “Then he jumped off and swam away.”
It’s kind of amusing to picture the throng of 7th graders and reporters just standing there expectantly waiting for the sleepy recently recovered beaver to save the wetlands. “Go on now, do something keystoney”!
And that’s a good sign for Killbuck Marsh — or anywhere else that beavers can survive and thrive. Beavers are considered a keystone species; without them, wetland environments and populations of other species collapse.
“Beavers are the greatest wetland engineers we have,” said Dennis Solon, manager of the wildlife area. “They’re the only other species besides us that can change the environment.”
That ability to engineer wetlands is why Native Americans referred to them as “little people” and respected them as totem animals. It’s estimated that there were as many as 400 million beavers in North America when the first Europeans arrived
You so know what state you’re in right? I mean you didn’t just hit your head and accidentally think you were in Washington?
Since America’s land had been developed — including for agriculture — in the beaver’s absence, the country’s largest rodents weren’t always welcome when they moved back in. But limits were put on beaver trapping in 1961, and beavers are now protected in many places, like the nearly 6,000 acres of Killbuck Marsh.
When Solon began working there in 1980, beavers were just starting to move in. Since the Division of Wildlife bought the property, the beavers were now protected. And they wouldn’t be labeled a nuisance for doing what they did: Building dams that sometimes flooded as many as 30 acres at a time.
“For them it was like the Garden of Eden,” he said.
Beavers build dams to create safe places for their lodges, as well as plentiful food sources. Because there were already some deep marshes along Killbuck Creek, they only had to build low dams to flood large areas. Pretty soon there was almost no area of the marshes that hadn’t been influenced by beavers, Solon said.
In the process, the beavers made a variety of habitats for other species. Cutting trees creates niche habitats for species ranging from honeybees to foraging animals. It opens up the forest canopy, allowing plants, grasses and saplings to grow. It also soaks their ponds with sunlight, making water plants, invertebrates and insects multiply.
Thankfully, the beavers’ lowland habitat was not badly damaged by the derecho. That event, which Solon calls “tragic,” knocked down the trees in the 2.000-acre upland forest, some of which were 100 or 150 years old. The destruction was so complete that neither humans nor animals could get through the debris, which is still being cleared a year later.
Before today I had always thought of Ohio as a tough spot to be a beaver. I figured there would be armies of farmers on every street corner ready to shoot any intruder on their land. But maybe I was wrong.
But there is something called the 100-year cycle that has affected Killbuck’s beaver populations. Although they also eat leaves, water lilies and other plants, beavers mainly feed on the cambium of trees, the layer between the bark and the trunk that creates new growth. When beavers flood an area, the trees eventually die and the beavers lose their most important food source.
Solon said many of Killbuck’s beavers have moved on, so he and his coworkers were happy to receive the one the Kitchens rehabilitated. As a baby, the beaver was apparently washed out by floodwaters in the Springfield Lake area. The people who found him couldn’t find the lodge or his parents.
Well you should be happy to get a beaver back. But honestly he needs a buddy or two.
The wetlands that beavers create help turtles, salamanders, frogs and other aquatic species and make great fish nurseries, away from the fast-running water. Waterfowl sometimes walk where fish are spawning, get eggs on their feet and carry them to new sites, she said.
Even when the beavers move on, the environments they’ve engineered continue to benefit other species. When dams break, the sediment creates grassy meadows. Other species are known to use abandoned beaver lodges, including river otters.
Kitchen said Springfield Lake is busy with boats and people and would not have been an ideal place to release the rehabbed beaver. She and her husband were happy the Killbuck management accepted the new resident.
“Dennis said he’d welcome any beavers that we have in the future,” she said. “That’s nice to know.”
Well that’s a match made in heaven, but honestly the fact that you occasionally find yourself with beaver orphans means that not everyone in Ohio feels the same way about the rodents.
