Beginnings Introduction If a forest can rejoice, and I think it can, that rejoicing will take place when a beaver selects a place on a stream or in a bay, builds a dam and a lodge and establishes residence. A pond will form, water weeds will grow, and habitat for all sorts of creatures will result -- ducks, deer, moose, muskrats, raccoons, skunks, fish, frogs and dragonflies. The water will seep deep into the earth and nurture trees and plants, even during droughts. Beavers are basic to a healthy wilderness. Over the years, I have known many beavers. Some have come to the Sanctuary as very small kits, orphaned and cold and hungry. Some have come as adults, injured, often angry. Mine has been the privilege of giving them the care they have required, and then, in most cases, returning them to the wild where they can live free, natural lives. These are the experiences I would like to share with you. Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary began many years ago; the beginning was unplanned. Its growth has been the result of a real need for a place of refuge for orphaned and injured wildlife. All those years ago, I was walking my dogs down a small dirt road in Muskoka. The road wound uphill and down, through woods, across a little brook, uphill again and down. Through a break in the trees I saw a huge old gray barn, and the valley, a log house, and rail fences -- all very beautiful and very quiet. To the east, an arm of high rocks and tall pines edged the valley, to the south, a swamp and woods and hills, to the west and north more hills and rocks and woods. The great gray barn seemed to brood over the deserted house and the meadows around it. I remember especially the beauty and the stillness. A year later, 1972, my dogs and I were living in that quiet valley Some things had changed. The old log house had burned, but on the fieldstone foundation another small house stood sturdily, ready for the adventures that were to come. The barn, still strong after almost one hundred years, was the home of two horses and a goat named Bramble. The fence rails surrounded a large meadow where the horses grazed and, when being inside the fence suited her, Bramble. Though I was still teaching high school, life in the valley was satisfying. Predictable. Brimming with hours of walking and riding, drawing and reading. Rather wonderful. And then the telephone rang. Over the years, the ringing of the telephone would come to signal the beginning of yet one more adventure. That first time, the conservation officer (a friend) asked simply, "I've got this orphaned raccoon. Want it?" "Yes." I had no idea how that one-word answer would change life in the valley -- would change my life. It was the beginning of the Sanctuary. The valley is still beautiful. The two horses and the goat have long since died of old age. Other dogs play where the first two lived out their lives. And now other creatures stay here: raccoons, skunks, foxes, woodchucks, muskrats, beavers, deer, moose, bears, coyotes and wolves -- even a cougar and a lynx -- because their natural life has been interfered with, usually by human actions, and they have needed help. As long as an animal is in need of food or medical attention or simply time to grow, it stays with us; however, once it can be independent, we take it to a carefully chosen release site and return it to the free life it wants to live. The Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary is situated just outside the village of Rosseau (located at the northern tip of the Muskoka Lakes), a small, pleasant village founded over one hundred years ago. During the years, all sorts of creatures have spent their early babyhood in a warm container beside my wood stove. Bear cubs have slept there and raccoons and skunks and foxes and fawns. But above all, beavers! In this vocation, one shouldn't have a favorite animal, for each requires lots of love, attention and understanding. And I will spend equal amounts of energy and time on any animal who needs it. But I cannot help, or really explain it. I love beavers! Before I had much experience with wildlife, I earnestly believed that biologists were almost as inspired as Holy scripture. So, when I held that first tiny beaver in my hands and felt the warmth of life in its urgent body, I was almost frightened. I realized that I knew little about sustaining that life, fulfilling all its needs, or preparing it for its return to the wild. That return had been for me the end towards which I worked for every raccoon and skunk, deer or fox -- now, any wild creature. But a beaver I did not know, so I turned to the biologists. "What must I do to prepare him for living free?" I asked a government biologist. "What food? What living arrangements? What contact with humans?" But the biologist seemed to find my enthusiasm somewhat boring, my questions irrelevant. I showed him the little pond in our valley, where I hoped to be able to teach the beaver ... what? The biologist shrugged his shoulders. "It can't be done," he said. "He can't go free. Can't be done." Knowing what I know now about the official attitude towards beavers, I'm sure he was adding silently, "And doesn't need to be done." Receiving no help there and watching the enthusiasm for life that the beaver kit continued to show, I turned to a friend who had a university degree in biology "I want him to go free," I insisted. But againcame the answer "Can't be done. I had one once. Gave it to a zoo." "Why can't it be done?" I knew the raccoons and the skunks, the deer and the foxes had all survived after they had been released. "Family animal. Learns everything from its family," was the reply. It seemed logical. I believed him. I would have to be his family, and that's the only excuse I have for keeping the first beavers I raised. I held the little kit, living in a straw-filled kennel next to the warmth of the wood stove in my house. I helped him as he enthusiastically suckled his formula from the baby bottle, gripped in both his small hands, and I promised, "I will do the very best I can for you." So began my long friendship with beavers. As I watched those first beavers, who did not go free, I saw intelligent animals, innovative, improvising with anything available in a household to do the work they would have done if they were free in a wetland. And the question grew and grew in my mind, "Why can't they go free? Why not?" Now, many years later, I can go out to various wetlands and watch beavers living wonderfully free lives, successful, fulfilled -- beavers who grew up here at the Sanctuary and who have been set free. Though I did not understand enough to give those first beavers their freedom, I do believe they lived full and good lives. And from them I learned, and many other adults and children have learned, just how wonderful beavers are. As a nation, we flaunt the beaver as our symbol. Is the beaver our symbol because it's intelligent and industrious, contributing more than any other creature to our environment? No. It's our symbol because the search for its valuable hide led explorers across a continent. Our country was explored at the cost of the lives of millions and millions of beavers. As a child being taught the history of Canada, I thought of fur traders as noble, brave men in huge canoes, pushing farther and farther inland, trading with willing Native people and returning with loads of furs. Now, whenever I hear of fur traders, all I can think of is dead beavers. For well over thirty years now I have lived with wild creatures. With many of them I have enjoyed friendship. And yet, for reasons I cannot in any way explain, I have learned to appreciate and (to some extent) understand the beaver above all others. I want to tell these stories of friendship to you, beginning with the first beavers with whom I shared my life completely, learning about them and from them. I also want to share my somewhat gradual realization that beavers do not have to be kept captive, not in my home and not in yours, and certainly not in a zoo. Even orphaned as a tiny kit, a beaver can grow up to swim away into the wilderness -- and live. Has our official attitude to the beaver changed? What have our governments done to protect beavers and their habitat? This year I went to the local Ministry of Natural Resources office and asked for a copy of the most recent legislation regarding beavers. All the person in charge could give me was a book entitled The Beaver in Ontario , published in 1972 and revised in 1976. Here, I learned that the chief importance of the beaver is purely economic -- how many jobs, how much money it contributes to the human race. Even more alarming, on page twenty it was noted that "the Fish and Game Act provides that a private landowner may destroy beaver by any means at any time of year if beaver are causing damage to his property." Damage? We once had a complaint from a cottager: "The beavers are eating my daisies!" It is legal to shoot beavers, to pour gasoline on the beaver lodges and burn them, and to dynamite them. And from these legal situations, we have received orphaned kits, burned, sick, frightened and very, very much alone. Though the trade in furs persists, and humans still wear the skins of dead animals for fashion, fur commerce is no longer the only threat to the beaver. In Muskoka, the part of Ontario in which I live, beaver habitat is steadily diminishing. Huge homes line our lakes, and beautiful gardens are carefully cultivated as though they were city parks. Our lakes are sliced with racing boats. Golf courses take over the once-quiet homes of wild things. The spring complaint of returning cottagers (also heard dozens of times during the summer!) recurs, as we answer our telephone to hear plaintive wails of, "There is a beaver in my boathouse!" or "The beavers are eating my trees!" Whose trees? Whose lakes? I want to say, "If you don't like it, go back to the city!" But of course that would not be economically feasible. The government will recommend hiring a trapper or having the beaver shot. "Relocation," says the biologist, "doesn't work." But it does. The phone rings often, too often, about the increasing numbers of orphaned or injured wildlife creatures. Because governments have done little to make the lives of wildlife better; because people have so little understanding of the benefits of beavers; and because help must be given to these, our fellow creatures, wildlife sanctuaries like the Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary have become important. Yet sanctuaries have difficulties meeting the need. Without any kind of government support, they must depend entirely on the generosity of concerned, compassionate people for gifts of food, money, volunteer time and work. If people think they're having problems with beavers, we can show them how to restrict beaver entry to their boathouses with chicken wire and also how to protect the trees. We can supply simple patterns for beaver bafflers to control water levels. Still, when I answer that complaint call and listen to the whining about "bad beavers," and the question, "What can I do?" I want to answer: "Enjoy them!" Habitats are stressed. Pollution is causing problems, not only for the beavers but for all of our wildlife. Blind raccoons are now common, and blind skunks. This year we have a blind fawn. Last winter, a blind beaver was found wandering down a street in Bracebridge. And although these problems may be the result of genetic defects or illness, pollution in the environment also becomes suspect. A little porcupine, who did well at first and who had started to walk with a tilt, finally died from the same symptoms that had become evident in two little beaver kits. Autopsy results showed parasites in their brains caused from polluted water. We have also had foxes with deformed legs come into the Sanctuary. For many of these, humans are responsible. Excerpted from Beaver Tales by Audrey Tournay All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
