Perseverance

One of the joys of my little part-time job at Arrowhead Environmental Education Center during the last nine years has watching the perseverance of Mr. and Mrs. Beaver. 

During those years I have never seen a beaver. They  are crepuscular critters; they get busy during morning and evening twilight, and generally avoid being out and about during daylight hours. I am rarely at Arrowhead at dawn or dusk.

I hasten to add that the toothy beasts have been seen by other humans; virtually every kindergarten class that visits has in its midst several keen-eyed youngsters who see beavers invisible to me!

Virtually every nature walk through our 335 acres reveals new evidence of the determination and hard work of these sturdy and persistent engineers. We see little piles of wooden shavings where they have downed saplings and sometimes bigger trees. We see sticks, freshly peeled of bark, atop lodges and dams. We see new dams, or repaired dams. We see the dark sawdust piles indicating beaver scat. 

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AN ASIDE:

As storyteller Doug Elliott would sing:

It starts with “S” and it ends with a “T.”

It comes out of you and it comes out of me.

I know what you're thinking but don’t call it that;

Let’s be scientific and call it “scat.”

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So to me, the outdoor educator, the beaver is a wonderful opportunity to teach about adaptations, habitat, keystone organisms, watersheds, and much more. Children and adults are just fascinated by these critters and their amazing ability to alter their environment to fit their needs.

Unfortunately, landowners, including some folks in the Department of Natural Resources, must deal with those changes to the environment that don't always harmonize with the needs of another organism -- Homo sapiens. In our particular case engineering by beavers can weaken or even flood roadways and drives, plug up human ponds and lakes, and obstruct human drainage systems.

So during my years at Arrowhead there has been an adversarial relationship between Mr. & Beaver and the DNR land management staff. Periodically the DNR folks haul out their end-loaders and Bobcats to destroy the infrastructure created by the beavers. I can't blame 'em. 

But still there's part of me that just has to cheer for the Beaver team in this never-ending game. 

Today as I toured the walk along Lovejoy creek and our upper wetland area, I noticed that Castor canadensis has scored a lot of runs in the latest inning of the contest. There must be five or six new, or newly renovated dams and one restored lodge. Each of the dams seems to raise the water level by anout 18 inches. The one farthest upstream is the primary dam that creates our upper wetland. The new dam is a greatly improved s-shaped structure that creates a pond that comes only inches from overflowing the gravel driveway.

Here are a couple of unrelated pictures and then some photos of the beavers recent work product...

One frequent stop on our nature walks was a Sycamore tree right on little Lovejoy Creek. It was not a large Sycamore, but was the largest tree in that area and made a nice place to talk about seed dispersal. And since most folks ID trees solely by leaves and rarely can ID a tree that has lost its leaves, I enjoyed teaching kids to identify this one by its bark and its "Christmas balls" that hang on all winter. I was very disappointed when the tree was drastically trimmed a year or so ago. Oh well. It still has those "Christmas balls" are still evident, just a mile high. 

Here's the whole thing.

The first evidence of the busy beavers ...

A more obvious new dam that effectively raises the water level more than a foot.

Another reconstructed and very effective dam.

Still another dam relocated from slightly downstream.

Finally is the main dam, the s-shaped dam that impounds lots of water for the primary pond and the home of Mr. & Mrs. Beaver and family.

The beavers really redesigned their primary dam. It is now both more compact, though still s-shaped, and built a little higher than before.

The old beaver lodge has been refurbished with freshly peeled sticks. No beavers have lived in this lodge for a couple of years.

This is our upper wetland looking upstream from the dam. You can see that the water level is only a few inches from the surface of the drive. 

The upper wetland has more water in it than I remember ever having before. This picture is looking downstream.