Isn’t this a beautiful painting by Lucy Arnold? It’s title is “Friends of the Eel River”. There’s a banana slug and a flying bat and a hermit thrush. But Hmm. Something seems to be missing. I can’t quite put my finger on it.
The Eel river is the third longest river in California and stretches from the top edge of Fort Brag all the way to Fortuna where it empties into the sea. You can be sure that its long range means that it was popular with the fur trade who generally made sure that it was empty of beavers by the mid 1800s.
Turns out it’s still pretty empty of beavers. Even though in recent years there has been concerted effort to teach folks about their benefits and beaver champion Brock Dolman himself spoke at the Save the Eel symposium a few years back, there still aren’t many. Megan Isadore of River Otter Ecology posted this the other night on facebook and I was reminded how rare they still are in the region.
Talia doesn’t see beaver on the eel. If you go to her lovely website there are no photographs of beaver. Over the years of processing depredation permits for the state I have come across only one or two for beavers in the region.
The eel river has a beaver shortage. That has to change.
