When I went to Atlanta and the surrounding suburbs, I was completely flabbergasted to come across a tree which had been felled by a beaver.
Not because they exist, I know quite a bit about them, but perhaps specifically because there no signs, no souvenir items in the nearby park shop, no jokes, no real mention, of the fact the forests around atlanta were so diverse they had large mammals. It was just an after thought. Oh that tree? Yes a big beaver did that randomly no biggie.
I then drove to the swamps in Florida and saw the alligators. But I was expecting the wildlife - as its an attraction and known about.
Small things like seeing a flock of large birds on a telephone line, in the city of miami, yet a flock of such a size, with such large birds, is something I had not seen in my life in any city or place in Europe - and I doubt anyone walking passed would stop to notice it.
I really do think the bio diversity in the US is taken for granted! I know about the special parks and often spoken about animals and habitats, but its the small moments you realise just dont exist anywhere else that I am unsure the locals even realise.
Maybe I am wrong - just wanted to share, thanks.
It was bonkers to me there were beavers and turtles in the lake down the street, not to mention big snakes and humming birds...and the first time you see a possum is kind of crazy
When I was growing up the British garden centre nearby sold chipmunks as pets, which amuses Americans when I tell them
Apparently they have wild raccoons in Germany
Farmers haven’t been happy though, as the wolves kill their sheep.
My mother (who lives in the UK) recently visited me (in the US). While walking we saw a bald eagle fishing. She was blown away. Here that's commonplace
We have a colony of bats in our backyard at the moment. A very noisy colony of bats that leave at dusk and return at 4 in the morning, squabbling.
It was fun for the first month. Now we're hoping it will get too cold for them and they will move back to the coast for a while.
https://www.austintexas.org/things-to-do/outdoors/bat-watchi...
Or the time I saw the fattest coyote I'd ever seen casually walk right past me on the sidewalk.
Or the coyote in Quizno's (sub sandwich chain) incident: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2007-04-04-070404...
A coyote walks into the shop and cools off in a drink cooler.
In town, though, they're brazen and walk right by people and sometimes will snatch their pets from their backyards as a snack.
It's usually just the outer suburbs, but both cities have undeveloped river valley greenspace that the animals use to find unobstructed paths almost to the city center.
https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/bear-sightings-around-alberta-ca...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/moose-calgary-northwe...
How can no-one have taken a picture, or, if they did, how can the Trib not have included it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_fur_trade
Beaver pelts have been referred to as ‘soft gold’.
There are 100's of thousands of bears roaming the US, 10's of thousands of mountain lions, millions of alligators, thousands of wolves, etc. etc.
It's a function of lower population density, I think, as well as agriculture tending to have moved to the midwest and plains states. There's been a lot of regeneration of forests in the Eastern US since they were clearcut in the 19th century.
Certain species like deer thrive in the boundaries between two different ecosystem types because they get different resources from both ecosystems.
Humans do not only reduce forest size, but also change the geometry of forests: fragmentation makes the edges more pronounced (increases the perimeter:area ratio)
This harms some animals like large solitary predators who require vast ranges, but helps other species like deer who prefer the edges.
I have dozens of deer living on my property. Badgers, skunk, chipmunks. Eagle fly by regularly. Flocks of crows in the thousands will occasionally park in my orchard, then move on.
They're really ecologically important, and while some may complain that they fall trees, that's actually very beneficial in the west where we have forest fires that burn far more trees than any beavers could hope to destroy to build their structures. This is not just for the northwest, but other drought and fire-prone western regions (Oregon, Colorado).
TL;DR Our elimination of beavers is exacerbating the problems of drought and fire in the american west.
Good video from PBS's Terra series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lT5W32xRN4
> A growing number of scientists, conservationists and grass-roots environmentalists have come to regard beavers as overlooked tools when it comes to reversing the disastrous effects of global warming and world-wide water shortages. Once valued for their fur or hunted as pests, these industrious rodents are seen in a new light through the eyes of this novel assembly of beaver enthusiasts and “employers” who reveal the ways in which the presence of beavers can transform and revive landscapes. Using their skills as natural builders and brilliant hydro-engineers, beavers are being recruited to accomplish everything from finding water in a bone-dry desert to recharging water tables and coaxing life back into damaged lands.
Apparently beavers are attracted to the sound of running water.
Here in the US midwest beavers are shot and their dams dynamited wherever they are found.
Not whenever. Sometimes. Today, in many places, even in the Midwest, beavers are considered beneficial to restoring a habitat to a more natural state. As long as they're controlled. But the wholesale slaughter you describe is simply false.
The majority of the US used to be endless chains of mosquito-infested beaver ponds, the entire length of every stream and river
Also completely false. Unless you define "majority of the US" to mean "portions of the Ohio, Mississippi, and Red River watersheds," which is far from the majority of the US.
The extinction of the beaver is what made the US agriculturally useful.
The beaver is not extinct.
For better or worse, the age of the beaver is definitely over. At least in the US.
You have generalized your personal experience in your very small part of the world to be representative of a vast nation.
I am under the impression that beavers intrinsically hate the sound of running water, and some beaver brain process causes them to feel the need to dam it up.
So, unless this beaver eradication program is a 21st century novelty, I can say that it is not generally true of the US midwest.
They are one of the most important animals due to their roles as 'ecosystem engineers'.
>"Protections have allowed the beaver population on the continent to rebound to an estimated 6–12 million by the late 20th century; this is a fraction of the originally estimated 60–400 million North American beavers before the days of the fur trade."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver#Distribution_and_status
I wouldn't be so sure about that.
After all, the age of apes may be over sooner or later and who knows, maybe beavers will take over?
So, who knows? The age of the beaver may just see a reboot.
What are you talking about? Climate change, as predicted in the IPCC reports at least, don't even come close to describing the demise of mankind. That sort of talk is just apocalyptic fear mongering.
"The arrival of Europeans warped indigenous peoples’ relationship with beaver from subsistence and kinship to extraction, turning many tribes, as Harold Hickerson put it, into “a vast forest proletariat whose production was raw fur.”12 The trade began innocuously enough in the 1500s, with European cod fishermen casually exchanging goods for pelts during their spells ashore in Newfoundland. When Henry Hudson found the Mohawk eager to trade in 1609 in modern-day New York, the rush was on. Europe was then in the process of exterminating nearly all its own beavers, and the untapped source of pelts proved irresistible."
Beavers help the land retain water. Our current, predominant agricultural system in the United States requires significant energy towards irrigation and fertilization. There are other systems that I see as better, and which would include beavers.
I'm a "landowner" in the current legal system, and while you likely don't really know me, I welcome a pond here, especially if the surround land also has plenty of insects, arachnids, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals (and all the others). Mosquitoes are not much of a problem around here, but I've lived places where the air is thick with them. Maintaining balanced diversity (including human population) is important to me.
Some of my neighbors have beaver families on their land and appreciate what they do. Some of those neighbors also grow food for themselves and others.
[0] https://www.worldcat.org/title/eager-the-surprising-secret-l...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/08/dam-it-h...
We're also animal lovers in the UK, with, I think, a bit of a sense of guilt for the animals we've made extinct on our island.
We had bears, beavers, wolves and so on - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinct_animals_of_the...
Speaking of bears, there is even a surviving bear pit about 10 miles outside London on the Thames: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosherville_Gardens
I see them in office complex ponds, in addition to forest preserves and in rivers and streams.
Yes, ponds in the middle of office parks. This office park, in fact:
42.046093034875774, -88.0546786192792
I have been seeing them there for years (I believe there's at least 2 distinct animals that live in those ponds).
But I'm not a fan of re-introducing (or introducing) these species into this habitat. Into London no less! After 400 years!!
Today, everything is politicised.
In the UK, farmers are forced to keep their cows enclosed in barns, in order to allow the orchids to grow. The message is 'nevermind the cows, nature is for orchids'.
I strongly suspect that these sorts of measures are taken in order to justify further governmental intrusion on what people are allowed to do, and to erode property rights in the name of conservation.
I wish we would erode more property "rights" in the name of conservation, since th actions of landowners affect everyone else, including all future generations.
Every extinct species is another burning of the Library of Alexandria.
I was unable to find anything close to this after some searching.
The majority of the US used to be endless chains of mosquito-infested beaver ponds, the entire length of every stream and river. Nearly uninhabitable by people.
The extinction of the beaver is what made the US agriculturally useful. There's not a single landowner I know, who wants a random pond flooding their field, road or house.
For better or worse, the age of the beaver is definitely over. At least in the US.