You know how it is. You work all year throwing a beaver festival and a week later its all gone. Like the faded shadow of a dream of a dream. Who remembers what they were doing last Saturday morning before the sun came up? Not me. 

Never me.

It’s okay though because through our steady effort we moved the needles on public opinion to make this headline possible. Prepare to be shocked. Nobody but us would expect a headline like this. And yes I think the festival had a spiritual, zeitgeist-y, atmospheric role in its subject matter, Why do you ask?

Beavers engineer their ecosystems in a way that helps moose and otters

A whole host of different mammals appear to benefit from having beavers in the area. In forests where beavers have been introduced in Finland, their presence is linked to increased activity of several species, including moose, otters, and weasels.

Beavers are described as “ecosystem engineers” because their dam-building work has such a huge effect on habitats. Both the Eurasian beaver and the American beaver were almost driven extinct by hunting in the early 20th century, but they have since recovered in North America.

Beavers and weasels! Who knew? The glowing article has the very FINEST beaver photo I have ever seen. And I consider myself somewhat of a connoisseur of these things. I bet you’ll agree with me that this photo, from Troy Harrison at the Getty is OUTSTANDING. Teeth, tail, whole package!

More recently, beavers have begun to re-establish themselves in Europe, thanks in part to at least 157 reintroduction projects that have taken place in 24 European countries. The touted benefits they bring to the environment include drought prevention, carbon sequestration, flood management and keeping streams cool.

They are also thought to boost biodiversity. To learn more about their impact on other mammals, Petri Nummi at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and colleagues set up camera traps and surveyed snow tracks at forest sites in southern Finland where the American beaver was introduced in the 1950s.

Moose, red foxes and raccoon dogs visited beaver ponds more than control ponds where beavers were not present. Snow tracks showed that moose, otters, weasels and pine martens were more active in beaver patches than other sites.

Well of course there were. Sheesh. Have you folks just started paying attention? Invertebrates=fish=things that eat fish=things that hunt things that eat fish. And nutrients for the moose! All this means more footprints,

“The otter is a species of some concern in Europe, so this may be important from that point of view,” says Nummi.

Beavers change the environments they occupy in several ways. Their dams flood large areas, creating shallow ponds that harbour lots of invertebrates. The trees they fell create open spaces in the forest where young saplings can grow. When beavers leave a pond and their dams break, the previously flooded area is rich in nutrients and can become a meadow.

Felled trees, saplings and aquatic plants can all provide food for moose. Weasels and pine martens feed on smaller mammals, which may benefit from dead trees they can shelter under. Red foxes and raccoon dogs eat frogs, which are plentiful in beaver ponds. Besides feasting on frogs and fish in the ponds, otters make use of abandoned beaver lodges and ice holes during the winter.

Previous studies in the same area have found that beavers are associated with a greater abundance of bats, frogs and waterbirds.

Nummi’s article has been accepted for publication in New Scientist and we look forward to reading the entire thing some time in the very near future. I’ve included the abstract below. It’s fun reading this as if it was “News”. The Daily Mail picked up the story this morning and is having a party with it. Good. Keep on touting beaver benefits in Europe. 

The beaver facilitates species richness and abundance of terrestrial and semi-aquatic mammals

PetriNummi^aWenfeiLiao^bOphélieHuet^ceErminiaScarpulla^deJanneSundell^e

Great work. Maybe the American biologists will eventually catch on?