An International Celebration Of Our Beaver!

Naturally Wonderful, by Rich Haag – April 3, 2012

I have just learned that Saturday, April 7, is International Beaver Day. The news arrived with Wildlife Wire, my monthly e-newsletter from the N.C. Wildlife Federation. This is important news for the Catawba River District, where beaver made their bold return just 20 years ago after a 200-year absence.

I had no idea that beavers are so popular that they rate their own day around the world, although I have liked them since I was a kid. I loved that they could build a dam across a stream and hold their breath for 15 minutes. I saw my first live beaver when my own sons were 9 and 11. We took an eight-week camping trip from Charlotte to the Pacific Northwest and back, including several days in Yellowstone National Park.

One morning we hiked an hour into the back country to a lake where, the trail guide promised, we might see beaver! The trail guide did NOT tell us that beaver come out mostly at night. Luckily, the beavers in this lake did not know that, either, because they soon appeared. We delighted in watching the dark-brown humps glide slowly across the small lake.

Beaver dam near Brevard in Pisgah Forest

Beaver quietly return to the Catawba

Little did we know, but about the same time we were watching the beavers out west, their cousins were setting up their first lodges in two centuries along the Catawba River.

Beaver once were plentiful here and across North America. Beaverdam Creek empties into Lake Wylie at Browns Cove, across the Catawba from Belmont. Beaver Dam plantation once stood in northern Mecklenburg County just east of Davidson.

Like North Carolina’s native wood bison, elk and passenger pigeons, beaver were eradicated across much of America by hunting (mostly for beaver pelts) and the destruction of their habitat for farming.

Unlike those other creatures, however, once man stopped trying to kill them off, the beaver came back in a big way. Perhaps 12 million beaver now live in places as diverse as the upper Davidson River in Pisgah National Forest (where I photographed their work last summer), Park Road Park in central Charlotte, downtown Chicago and the riverbanks of New York City!

Beaver trivia

In honor of International Beaver Day I have done some research on the world’s second-largest rodent. I am even more impressed with these fellows now than when I was a kid (and they were beaver kits).

Tree felled by beaver in Reedy Creek Park

• Beavers range across all of the U.S. and Canada and even into parts of Mexico.
• Beavers mate for life, grow to 60 pounds or more and live 20-plus years in the wild.
• Beavers really do live on the trees they chop down along with other stuff. One beaver can take down up to 200 trees a year.
• The expression “Busy as a beaver” really fits. These animals will “work” about 12 hours a day - no, make that night.
• Beavers really do love to build dams. A satellite discovered the world’s biggest beaver dam about 5 years ago in Alberta, Canada. At 2,800 feet, this wooden and mud structure is twice as long as Hoover Dam! 
• Beavers are a big part of American and Canadian lore. Canada's Parliament building in Ottawa has a big stone beaver over the entrance. The New York City seal includes a beaver! Oregon State University's teams are the Beavers. (Not sure what their team cry is. Maybe "Gnaw! Gnaw! Gnaw our way to victory!")
• Beavers are great for birds and fish! While beaver dams can make a mess of farm fields and beaver teeth can girdle and kill trees with great proficiency, researchers now understand that many other kinds of wildlife prosper where beaver are plentiful. Two professors at Appalachian State University have found a distinct jump in the populations of migratory waterfowl in the southern Appalachian mountains where beaver have built dams. Other research has shown that birds as diverse as woodpeckers and great blue heron thrive in the wetlands and grassy stream banks created by beaver activity.
• Similar research in the Pacific Northwest has shown dramatically higher levels of salmon and trout in streams with beavers living nearby.
• The mostly good news for us is that beavers once again thrive along the Catawba River basin. The main negative is that hungry beavers have made a mess of Mecklenburg's Park Road Park and the Colonel Francis Beatty Park. Park staff are working this spring to either control the beaver damage or remove the beavers altogether.

My second beaver sighting - 2 miles from home!

I see visual reminders nearly every day of beaver activity well within the Charlotte city limits – including dozens of gnawed trees at Reedy Creek Nature Preserve and the muddy footprints of busy beavers that live beside the Mallard Creek Greenway near UNC Charlotte.

I even had my second beaver sighting two summers ago just 2 miles from my house. My older son and I were walking a boardwalk near Mallard Creek after a summer deluge and what should we see gliding through the brown floodwaters but two furry humps. Beavers!

This Saturday, on International Beaver Day, I’ll officially celebrate this wonderful revival of a great fellow creature in our midst. Won't you join me?

About Rich Haag -  Rich gained his love for the outdoors while roaming the woods and climbing river gorge near his upstate NY home. He has spent many vacations – one lasting eight weeks -  camping with his wife, Karen, and their sons. Rich still visits the woods nearly every day, either walking with Karen at Reedy Creek Nature Preserve or cycling on the Mallard Creek Greenway.