River Shapers
The Shapers
Beavers are known by many names - keystone species, eco-artists, architects, Castor canadensis, furbearers, pests. They are paramount allies in the effort to bolster resilience within ecosystems in the face of the ongoing Climate Crisis, and their creative engineering of dams, ponds, rivers, estuaries, and lakes provide some of the most being-friendly and biologically productive spaces in North America.
Once decimated by colonizers and the European fur trade of the 1800s onwards, beaver families were able to slightly recover to an estimated 6-12 million individuals, which equates to 3-10% of their pre-colonized population. These numbers, last surveyed in 1988, have legally placed the Beaver community as one of ‘least concern’; their population continues to be treated as one that is stable, despite their tremendous and continuous mass-murder allowed, encouraged, and enacted by the United States Forest Service, United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and local agencies such as the British Columbia Fish and Wildlife Branch and the Oregon and Washington Fish and Wildlife agencies.
As Partners
Beavers are essential partners to all who rely on freshwater ecosystems. In the human conservationist effort to restore and create wetlands and slow-water spaces, one must collaborate with Beavers to build streams friendly for baby fish, provide lush resting grounds for migratory birds, recharge aquifers necessary for all terrestrial beings who rely on drinkable water, and provide firebreaks as an oasis of resilience for those fleeing fires.
Beavers are Resilience. As the ongoing Climate Crisis continues and grows, the habitat and populations bolstered by Beavers’ land engineering practices - which all river-dwelling or river-visitors in North America have evolved to thrive with over seven-and-a-half million years - is vital to protect Forests, Beavers, and all of their collaborators.
While Beavers themselves are not considered threatened, their activities are vital to numerous beings who are facing extinction; notably, Beaver families foster an incredible relationship with all species of Salmon, and they share an especially strong bond with the endangered Coho Salmon as builders of habitat in which they rear their young.
Of Vitality
The livelihood of Beavers have been continually threatened by colonizers, corporations, and governments; often considered a conservationist success story similar to those of the Bison and Bald Eagles, there is no contemporary count of Beaver populations. Listed by Oregon law as a predator (despite having an entirely plant-based diet!), a nuisance animal, and a furbearer; there is no special designation of hunting laws for the keystone species that have a heavily documented and understood vital impact on the populations of endangered Birds and Salmon.
The laws designating Beaver families as predators and furbearers are deliberately drafted with monetary input from logging and agricultural industries, specifically those facilitated and supported by the United States Forest Service (USFS.) The wetland habitats designed by Beavers threaten their ability to log in National and State Forests; therefore, the USFS encourages others - and oftentimes their employees - to trap and kill Beaver families on and around Forest Service-claimed land in order to prevent the creation of new wetland areas, as these habitats are non-profitable to the USFS.
The Collaborators
You were brought to this digital space either through a QR code or an external website - I am now asking you to download, print, and put up one or more of these posters to lead others to this space as well. Think of places where those who may be unaware of the issue surrounding conservation and Beavers who would be willing to learn and participate may frequent; on park or trail signs, in town centers, gathering spaces, and any surface asking to hold a flier.
My only instruction is do not infringe upon the spaces dedicated to Black Lives Matter, such as downtown Portland. Those spaces are for the BLM movement to thrive, gather, and utilize according to the BLM community leaders. We must leave those spaces for BIPOC lead movements to flourish.
Beavers are popularly known as the Oregon State animal, as a university sport’s team, as those who build dams and flood uplands; as pests, as least-concern, as those who eat wood and cartoon symbols of commercial logging. Their vital role in the creation of drinkable water, ecological resilience, home-builders for young salmon, stewards of a seven-and-a-half year old environmental tradition that births abundant, lush, productive, and resilient habitat for all inhabitants of the American continent, is not as well known.
This space serves as a starting point for the shift of our relationship with Beavers in both the effort to mitigate mass extinction and loss due to the Climate Crisis, and in our lives as humans trying to re-remember that we are collaborators with the beings on this earth.