What a day Thursday was! I would call it a red-letter day for beavers, but we’ve had those before. This was UNLIKE any other day ever that we have yet seen. I’m tempted to say this was almost like a GOP messaging day – all these different representatives from all over independently on camera with the same set of talking points. (Except of course these were true). Honestly. I dreamed of days like this. This is the closest we’ve ever come to truly having a deep beaver bench.
It started in the morning with Ben Goldfarb on Jefferson radio in Oregon.
An hour after that interview Ben’s book review showed up in Scientific American. And no, I’m not kidding.
Beavers Made America Great, a New Book Explains
The ghosts of beavers past still haunt New York City, where Scientific American is based. Our official city seal features two beavers. The walls of the Astor Place subway station 
include bas-relief beavers gnawing on terra-cotta tree trunks. (John Jacob Astor made his financial killing on beaver furs.) And a few short blocks north of our current offices, you can stroll down Beaver Street. Or flee down it, depending on the situation. What I didn’t know until I read Goldfarb’s book was that when the Dutch bought Manhattan from the Lenape in 1626, the island “was little more than a pot-sweetener: The real prizes were the 7,246 beaver skins that sailed to Europe.” I now choose to think that self-portraits by the hatted Vermeer and Rembrandt include New York City beavers on the masters’ heads.
Then an hour after that it broadened into Kate Lundquist and Eli Asarian on the radio at Humbolt state for KHSU. Are you counting states yet? That makes three.
Then our friend Ben Dittbrenner just happened to show up on KUOW radio in Washington State.
Everyone wants to live in Seattle. Especially beavers
Benjamin Dittbrenner is a PhD candidate at the University of Washington, researching the role beavers can play in mitigating hydrologic changes in the climate. He’s also the executive director of Beavers Northwest, where he helps solve beaver conflicts. And Dittbrenner said that after years of beavers being trapped and killed — first for their pelts, then because they disturbed farmland and other areas inhabited by humans — beavers are rebounding. Fast.
But Dittbrenner said there are ways of mitigating flooding without displacing or killing beavers, including adding a mechanism that keeps water at an acceptable level.
“If it’s done correctly, the beavers don’t know that anything has happened,” he said. “They just go on with their happy beaver lives, and then people are assured because they know the pond is going to stay at that level.”
Well here’s a head scratcher for you. How come Washington has the same rules outlawing body gripping traps and they’re the smartest state in the nation about beaver management at a policy level, and Massachusetts outlawed the traps and they’re, well, not?
Okay, that’s four states now, Onto Vermont and our old friend Skip Lisle.
Beavers, Bees and Bad Policies: Wildlife in the News
