Would You Want a Beaver for a Neighbor?

If you don't mind living near the largest rodent in North America (and the second largest in the entire world) you might say yes. To those of you who freak out when a little mouse runs across your garage floor, read on and see if I can pique your interest in learning more about an animal that is contributing to the changes taking place over time in the Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area on the Tongass National Forest.

Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area has undergone tremendous change beginning with the Ice Age glaciers which advanced and retreated carving out Mendenhall Lake - (the big lake in front of our backyard glacier) and several smaller lakes which created good beaver habitat.

Humans helped shape the area, too. Some of the smaller lakes in the Mendenhall Recreation Area, known as Dredge Lakes, were dredged for gravel for road building back in the 1940's-1970's also creating homes for beavers. Soon after, houses were built nearby and snow machines and off-road vehicles were common on the trails until prohibited in the early 1990's. Change has happened to animal populations, too. Twenty years ago you could hardly walk at Dredge Lakes without stepping on a toad. However, they all disappeared and it's still a big mystery as to why. Today we use the area for biking, hiking, jogging, cross-country skiing, dog walking, berry picking, fishing, birding and a little waterfowl hunting.

Humans and glaciers first altered the landscape that beavers now inhabit, but they continue to cause change. As they dam ponds they provide new habitat for juvenile salmon. When they cut trees for building and food more sunlight reaches the forest floor changing the composition of vegetation which in turn attracts different wildlife. Of course beavers alter human use of the Recreation Area too, flooding our hiking and biking trails and drowning our favorite berry bushes.

I am currently not a teacher but if I were, my students and I would study beavers in the Mendenhall Recreation Area because I think we can learn a lot about the community in which we all live. For instance, you can use GPS units to map the location of points of interest such as beaver dams and cut trees. There is even a grave site to discover. Lots of cool wildlife also utilizes the area from wolves to black bears, mink to snowshoe hares, swans, loons, kingfishers, porcupines as well as a variety of ducks. And you don't have to stop at science. Beavers are culturally relevant to Alaska Native people in Southeast. Of course any of this could be integrated with language arts. Removing the beavers from Dredge Lakes has been a controversial subject over the years and even involved a stay of execution by a former governor. Students could get involved in politics!

There are several resources you might you might use to study beavers in the Mendenhall Recreation Area. A beautiful new book by Mary Willson and Bob Armstrong just came out. Forest Service biologists inserted an infrared camera into a beaver lodge and early in June a mother beaver gave birth to three kits! Another adult beaver and yearling share the lodge with mom and the kits and they are probably all related. You can view the beaver cam on-line at the Tongass National Forest page. (The camera stopped working a couple of days ago because the beavers chewed it up -that's what beavers do. So check back later when the Forest Service hopes to have it fixed.) In addition, Juneau Ranger District fisheries, wildlife and education staff are available to help teachers and students, too.

So now what do you think? Would you want one for a neighbor? Here are a couple of video clips, from the live beaver cam showing mom and her nursing kits. Maybe that will help convince you. If you live in the Mendenhall Valley in Juneau, Alaska they already are your neighbors and much can be learned by studying them and the place they inhabit.