A Beaver dam across the creek has raised the water level three and a half feet, flooding the oxbow, causing little creeklets to cross it more directly. It’s cool seeing how they shape the landscape with their activities, keeping these vital stream deltas snaking around, spreading nutrients and furthering the dynamics.
A pair of Beavers swam up the creek under water past me to the base of their dam, circling about, as I crouched on the shore examining wee plants. When I stood up, they slapped the water surface with their tails as they dove, and disappeared downstream.
Beaver (Castor canadensis)
Chicken wire installed to protect specimen Black Cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa), Salicaceae family, from idle Beaver gnawing. In the absence of wolves, grizzlies and mountain lions, the Beaver’s impulses lack sufficient checks, which is where we come in. It doesnt hurt the trees or the Beaver, and they certainly have plenty of Willow, Alder and young Cottonwood to feed on. It feels a bit invasive but we are way past laissez-faire in our dealings with nature at this point. I initially approached the Park about loosening some historic wire fencing that was girdling big Cottonwoods near the mansion. Then I offered to add fencing to a half gnawed tree that threatened to fall on the pedestrian bridge, then these big trees anchoring the oxbows that the Beaver were nibbling on as well. Working with a Park environmental scientist, we added a few more, documenting our work, to allow for follow up wire loosening as the trees grow. Ten years later the Beaver, and Cottonwoods and fencing are all fine. Meantime their damming has flooded this vicinity and one of these big leaning Cottonwoods has toppled. And the beaver have burrowed and eaten the roots of another big chickenwired Cottonwood anchoring the shore berm, and it has toppled as well, which hasnt done anyone any particular good. It’s not like the Beaver ate all that bark from the trees it felled. They must keep chewing or their teeth will grow up into their skull. (sounds like an apt metaphor for some people I can think of) Oh well. So be it. It’s all just mortality. Our place is merely to push back against it some, while we can. It’s like the weeding we do. It’s not even so much about the demonstrable results, or ultimate eradication, but rather the reciprocal position such acts put us in, the sympathetic rhythm, in our relations with this living place.
Curvepod or Western Yellow Cress (Rorippa curvisiliqua), Brassicaceae
Primrose Monkeyflower (Erythranthe primuloides), Phrymaceae (Scrophulariaceae) family and non-native Norwegian Cinquefoil, Potentilla norvegica
Primrose Monkeyflower (Erythranthe primuloides), Phrymaceae (Scrophulariaceae) family