Castor canadensis

Turns out my frost-driven pace along the morning trail takes me past new-fallen trees that the night marauders of Slab Creek have targeted. Actually Gord, my neighbour up the road, tipped me off that beavers were going at the trees in the park. I asked him to keep them at the swings, slides and sandbox—there is County liability coverage for that. Gord was not to be humoured.

“And besides, while I appreciate my newly created waterfront property and the efforts of beavers to see to it all,” he went on. “Plainly said, the sump pump just can’t handle the expansion of the marsh into my basement.”

Here’s the dilemma. Having a beaver as the icon of a nation—industrious, part of our heritage— the icon looks good on sweatshirts, the animal deemed cute as long as beaver business like tree harvesting and wetland land management happen out of sight and mind. However, bring the beaver to light, and well, things get tricky. Seems like we get anxious when the national icons choose to take down trees in our backyards and public spaces just because, we guess, the trees are handiest to fall and move more easily than trees way back in the woods someplace. It can also be easily interpreted as a be-dammed approach: “Let them wear boots!” A beaver credo, a we were here first type of thing.

Come to think of it, and I’m not exactly sure who did the tally, but beaver actuaries figured that before 1760, an estimated 200 million of the critters happily built homes throughout the North American continent. By my math, that’s 5.6 beavers for every present-day Canadian. Considered to be the landscape architects of the natural world, beavers focus on water management for their habitat. That way, they are safe from predators and can peacefully float lumber and groceries to the back door, no problem.

Beaver dams create wetlands; they control flooding of streams while filtering sediments and toxins before flowing into oceans. Cattails that depend on wetlands add to that water purification. Wetlands sustain one half of endangered and threatened species in North America. So you see, the beaver as a shape-shifter has sanctified its role in the natural world.

But as far as the unnatural world goes—as in us—that’s another story. The very mention of the ‘b’ word can spark unimagined expletives from the most eloquent and mildmannered farmer, forester and roadway engineer. In the days of the steam train, in order to preserve the rail beds, a stick of dynamite tossed onto beaver dams was as far negotiating went.

Before then, beginning in the 1600s with the castor gras—I love this French word for the beaver coat—global wardrobe and headwear fashion took care of beaver overpopulation when demand for the beaver pelt became the backbone of the new world economy. In the era previous, if you were considered to be beaver-like by an indigenous person, it meant you were affable. But as things are bound to happen. That same economy with trade networks and corporations also introduced brass kettles, iron axe heads, firearms and booze, leading to trade wars among indigenous peoples, as well as countries like Spain, France, Russia, Britain, Holland and the New England states and—sheesh, seems like no one is ever happy when it comes to sharing territory—affable no more. To digress, there is still a lot of old money from the fur trade around: the Astoria family in the northern U.S. for example, were leaders in the fur trade. Astoria as in Waldorf-Astoria hotel in the Big Apple.

By the mid-1800s, beaver fashion became passé and the critter got a break. Wherever it still existed, that is. Today the beaver is the comeback kid. In fact, Castor canadensis has given us reason to be proud.

One hundred and twenty miles north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, in a region virtually inaccessible and wiped out of beavers in the past, is the largest animal-made structure: It can be seen on NASA satellite imagery. Picture this: 50 years in the making, currently a half-mile long and with the start of beaver urban sprawl, two suburb dams in the works that will soon reach a total of a mile across; one hundred beaver residents in one square kilometre. In beaver Olympic terms, we rule, beating out the U.S. for the largest beaver dam in the world. Pretty dam good I say. Put that on a t-shirt.

And so the story goes, nature taking care of itself. Beavers are repopulating old habitats, re-engineering the landscape, while human nature is making it easier, downsizing beaver’s natural predators—wolves, coyotes, fishers and bears.

But there potentially is a good side to the story. And I’ll need your help to see me through here. You see, in Britain, while they eradicated the beaver long ago, just now, scientists have caught on to how beavers have innate abilities to create good. Jolly good, I add. So imagine an emigration program, us rewarding a former homeland, gifting its monarchy with families of beavers as part of the exchange for the family of swans we received that turned out to be very content here and are now most prolific. Call it ambassadorship, balance of trade, a free kittens plan—whatever—the problem of the Slab Creek invasion could be solved presto. And one charter plane flight could do the trick. We’ll make it first class with a menu for our serious herbivore passengers— shoots, buds, foliage, roots, stems, bark, twigs; you see, here again we have the technology, a host of culinary experts that could set off new trends in herbivore dining.

But before I go, here’s one more. Make the County into a little Holland, where, with beaver teamwork— no need to pay overtime—we allow waterways to flood so we can travel on barges and gondolas, thus finally making election issues of paving roads history. Why stop at slow food, let’s have a slow road movement. Think about it. Dam! There we go. There’s always solutions to problems near at hand now, ain’t there.