This looking up ‘urban beavers’ thing is producing some amazing results. An awesome article on several beaver habitats in Dallas Texas, with what is quite possibly the best urban beaver photo I’ve ever seen. I’m a sucker for curved dams in the country or the city!
Beaver – Population Density
For this project we explored two stream beds for the purposes of observing and documenting evidence of Beaver activity. The small creeks we chose were located at opposite corners of an approximately six square mile rectangle of suburban North Texas.
Beaver sign was abundance and easy to find in these areas. The evidence we found included felled trees, dams, lodges, slides, and Beaver skeletal remains. We found a total of five dams in the areas we explored—four active and one that had been recently destroyed by people.
Isn’t that remarkable? Beaver dams all over Dallas just trying to save water for the poor folks in Texas. Apparently the author of this blog is a well known local naturalist and colleague of our beaver saving friends in the area, so I’m pretty excited to have more voices on our side. Let’s remember this site.
Next up is an UNBELIEVABLE article on urban beavers from Seattle. I was absolutely floored how delightfully relative this was and could NOT believe I had failed to remember writing about. Surely I couldn’t have missed it?
Then I noticed the date. About 4 months before my time.
Meadowbrook Pond: A beaver playground
Thursday, August 24, 2006
“This is the Disney World of beavers,” said Bob Spencer, creek steward coordinator for Seattle Public Utilities, as he looked out over Meadowbrook Pond in Northeast Seattle. Fuzzy mallard ducklings and great blue herons were playing second fiddle to the obvious star attractions: several of North America’s largest rodents entertaining an enthusiastic crowd of visitors.
“Beaver! Beaver! Beaver!” three kids shouted in unison to their dad who hurried over to watch a large furry brown head tote a leafy branch to the edge of the lodge.
“These hip, urban beavers have kind of gone condo,” Spencer said, pointing out their home, a jumble of materials ingeniously supported by the bridge turned wildlife viewing platform, which spans this detention pond. A large dent in the handrail shows where a broken alder located midway across the water fell under their sturdy front teeth.
Spencer has found that, like Ryer, even those with beavers in their backyards are excited to be living among them: “Seattleites regard having beavers back as a sign that something is getting better.”
Every single word could have been lifted from Martinez. Right down to the excited children and using the bridges as viewing platforms. I’m sure we’ll revisit this article again, but for now go read the entire thing and imagine it as a trailer for our own beaver movie that was coming soon.
One last treasure I could NOT believe finding were these promotional/educational tools from PBS. Theoretically released to coincide with the beaver documentary, but missed by me and countless others. I vaguely remember Jari talking about the plan for these, but I think they were delayed or something. When I shared them on facebook yesterday there were 25 immediate shares from beaver experts who had obviously missed them too.
So we know it isn’t just us. Whew.
