When I was a boy, there were few beavers around. This was true even in rural Oregon, the beaver state. Well now there are more beavers than you can shake a stick at. Too many beavers, in fact, since they're undoing what people have done to tame nature and otherwise control water.
It's funny, we liked them for the fur, we love them as a symbol (see Oregon state flag at right, the only state flag with images on two sides, and look there's a lovely little beaver on the back!) What'll we do with too many beavers? Start a bounty program to get rid of them? Or learn to live with them? Tweet
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Funny- there is a conversation going on on the Unio-L listserver on the damage being done to North America's critically imperiled assemblage of freshwater mussels by beaver-mediated alteration of stream habitat...
Hmmm...beavers harming freshwater mussels? How did the mussels survivie the good old days of lots of beavers before humans came along?
I suppose the answer is that the mussels are thriving in some remnant habitats and are too precious to feel good about losing a single population to beavers when the mussels have nowhere else to go.
There's a beaver dam near me, they're tearing down trees and altering the landscape at a prodigious rate.
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_eImeuDtObGE/RvxFSGEVkDI/AAAAAAAAAKw/20BO0pqtNgU/s144/IMG_0005.jpg
I remember as a kid going to Colorado on vacation, and being sooo super excited when we would see a beaver. Back then, it didn't happen to often. Now, I see five of them alone in a pond near my house in Texas. And a million every time we're at the lake. I would think it would have something to do with eliminating their predators. Not really sure what eats them but, here in Texas, seems like everybody shoots anything remotely wild or with teeth.
Funny conversation on post. Anyway i am pretty interest with reading this post.
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