there is nothing better than some fantastic beaver footage backed by the legendary voice of sir david attenborough.

from The New York Times via beaver unlimited reps amy e. and darko o.

Return of the Once-Rare Beaver? Not in My Yard.

CONCORD, Mass. — The dozens of public works officials, municipal engineers, conservation agents and others who crowded into a meeting room here one recent morning needed help. Property in their towns was flooding, they said. Culverts were clogged. Septic tanks were being overwhelmed.

“We have a huge problem,” said David Pavlik, an engineer for the town of Lexington, where dams built by beavers have sent water flooding into the town’s sanitary sewers. “We trapped them,” he said. “We breached their dam. Nothing works. We are looking for long-term solutions.”

Mary Hansen, a conservation agent from Maynard, said it starkly: “There are beavers everywhere.”

Laura Hajduk, a biologist with the state’s Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, had little to offer them. When beavers are trapped, others move in to replace them. And, she said, you can breach a beaver dam, but “I guarantee you that within 24 hours if the beavers are still there it will be repaired. Beavers are the ultimate ecosystem engineers.”

That was not what Mr. Pavlik was hoping to hear.

He is not alone in his dismay, and it is not just beavers. Around the nation, decades of environmental regulation, conservation efforts and changing land use have brought many species, like beavers, so far back from the brink that they are viewed as nuisances. As Stuart Pimm, a conservation ecologist at Duke University, put it, “We are finding they are inconvenient.”

In Florida, alligators were once nearly wiped out by hunters; today the state maintains a roster of trappers who remove thousands of nuisance gators each year. The pesticide DDT once left the Pelican State, Louisiana, bereft of the birds; today wildlife organizations say fishermen must guard their bait and catches from the birds. In California, warnings about marauding mountain lions are posted on hiking trails.

read on

via high country news

Voyage of the Dammed
Nature's engineers -- and environmental heroes -- make a comeback

LIBERTY LAKE, WASHINGTON

Even with a tall wooden cross mounted on the wall behind her, Mary O'Brien doesn't look like a typical preacher. In her blue cardigan and jeans, a single heavy braid falling like a gray rope down her back, she paces slowly from side to side, telling her listeners that we are worshipping a false landscape.

She means the West of fast-flowing streams and invitingly open banks, celebrated in photographs and songs and pickup truck commercials. That West is a modern illusion, she warns, even though we accept it as gospel and praise its beauty.

Several dozen people lean forward in the burnt-orange pews, intently focusing on O'Brien's message.

We have lost touch with a truer, older West, she goes on. But there is a savior who can lead us back to it: the beaver.

Castor canadensis, believe it or not, is a time shifter. The humble, hardworking rodent, through its dams and ponds, can extend the release of water late into summer, saturating the ground and healing watersheds. It has the power to re-create the primordial, wetter West that existed for millennia -- a West we just missed seeing.

"Restoration of the beaver is restoration of a landscape we don't have a cultural connection to," O'Brien says, "because they largely were trapped out."

Let us repent.

Beaver are a keystone species: Amen. Beaver restore riparian habitat: Amen. Beaver raise up the water table: Amen. Beaver show us the Western landscape as it was just prior to permanent white settlement. A big amen for this.

read on

from the Missoulian

POWER OUTAGE UPDATE: Beaver chewing cottonwood causes widespread outage; all electricity now restored
Posted on May 28
By ALLISON MAIER for the Missoulian

A beaver and a cottonwood tree caused a widespread power outage early Thursday, leaving NorthWestern Energy workers scrambling for 10 hours to restore electricity to thousands of customers from Missoula to Charlo Heights south of Hamilton, said spokesperson Claudia Rapkoch.

The outage occurred at about 2 a.m., affecting residents from south Missoula through the Bitterroot Valley, Rapkoch said. Power was restored to most of the customers by 7 a.m., and all of the electricity was back on by noon.

About 5,400 customers in upper and lower Miller Creek, the South Hills and Lolo were affected, in addition to about 2,000 in the Bitterroot Valley, Rapkoch said.

The outage was caused after a cottonwood tree chewed by a beaver fell down on a power line. For unknown reasons, a breaker that should have prevented the line from overheating didn’t work, causing one of the power poles to catch fire and a couple of other small spot fires to start. The fires were quickly extinguished.

Rapkoch said everything was back in order by Thursday afternoon except for one power line, though it was not causing any outages.

“There is nothing significant in terms of damage,” she said.

Don't be deterred beaver. Keep on chewing.

from wikipedia

Beavers are two primarily nocturnal, semi-aquatic species of rodent, one native to North America and one to Eurasia. They are known for building dams, canals, and lodges (homes). They are the second-largest rodent in the world (after the capybara). Their colonies create one or more dams to provide still, deep water to protect against predators, and to float food and building material. The North American beaver population was once more than 60 million, but as of 1988 was 6–12 million. This population decline is due to extensive hunting for fur, for glands used as medicine and perfume, and because their harvesting of trees and flooding of waterways may interfere with other land uses.

Beavers are known for their natural trait of building dams in rivers and streams, and building their homes (known as "lodges") in the resulting pond. Beavers also build canals to float build materials that are difficult to haul over land. They use powerful front teeth to cut trees and plants that they use for building and for food. In the absence of an existing pond a Beaver has to construct a dam before building his lodge. First they place vertical poles and then fill between the vertical poles with a crisscross of horizontally placed branches. They fill in the gaps between the branches with a combination of weeds and mud until the dam holds back sufficient water to surround the lodge.

They are known for their "danger signal": when startled or frightened, a swimming beaver will rapidly dive while forcefully slapping the water with its broad tail. This creates a loud "slap," audible over great distances above and below water. This noise serves as a warning to beavers in the area. Once a beaver has made this danger signal, nearby beavers dive and may not reemerge for some time. Beavers are slow on land, but good swimmers that can stay under water for as long as 15 minutes. (Wilson, 1971) Rarely does a frightened beaver attack a human.[2]

Beavers do not hibernate, but store sticks and logs in a pile in their pond. Some of the pile is generally above water which accumulates snow in the winter. The insulation of the snow often keeps the water from freezing in and around their food pile which provides a location where beavers can breathe when outside their lodge.

Fossil remains of beavers are found in the peat and other superficial deposits of Britain and the continent of Europe; while in the Pleistocene formations of Britain and Siberia, occur remains of a giant extinct beaver, Trogontherium cuvieri, representing a genus by itself.

Beavers have webbed hind-feet, and a broad, scaly tail. They have poor eyesight, but keen senses of hearing, smell, and touch.
Beaver swimming

Beavers continue to grow throughout life. Adult specimens weighing over 25 kg (55 lb) are not uncommon. Females are as large as or larger than males of the same age, which is uncommon among mammals.

for more see wikipedia

First post of the BU blog - a group of scientists response to the overwhelming lack of support for beavers as keystone species and vital geomorphic agents.


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