Beavers in oakley

When the East Bay Regional Park District began clearing away non-native plants and adding dirt to raise the soil level at the Delta Science Center facility in Oakley they hadn’t expected on inviting critters to come out of the woodwork, but that was exactly what happened. “Bringing beavers together with the shoreline trees was not really going according as planned,” said Mike Moran East Bay Regional Parks District naturalist.
This weekend Moran and a group of area citizens took a walk around the center’s wetlands and the Big Break Regional Trail off of Big Break Road as part of a regularly scheduled Walking The Wetlands of Big Break. There, Moran showed off trees where the industrious beavers had chewed away along the base and where some trees had to be cleared away because they had toppled from the beavers’ damage.
Moran said that the beavers weren’t new to the area, as a matter of fact, the beavers have been in Oakley so long that in the 1830s and 1840s traps were set in the Big Break area in hopes of catching beavers for their thick pelts. It was referred to as another kind of Gold Rush.
“The problem was that the local Mexican and Indian population didn’t like the fact that companies were making money off the beavers and kept setting off the traps so that the beavers wouldn’t get caught. Finally the enterprise stopped and the beavers were free to roam the area,” he said.
Today the beavers continue to be natural to the habitat, but generally stayed closer to the shoreline. They live off the natural blackberries in the area, as well as the wood along the shore. In this case, they just happen to come upon a new food source and dug right in.
In order to protect the new trees the district placed fencing around the bottom of the trees within the beavers’ path to keep them from causing further damage. Several of the trees needed to be taken down, Moran said, but others were saved even while showing signs of the beavers’ damage. One tree was carved out at the bottom by the beaver and carved above by a person with the inscription “Leave it to beaver”.
Although hard to find, since the animal is nocturnal, the beaver lives in most of the United States, except for southern California, Florida and Nevada. They are part of the rodent family and are considered to be one of the largest weighing in at 45 to 60 pounds. Beavers are considered builders and usually are found by the dams and lodges they build in streams, rivers and other waterways. Their long incisor teeth help them to cut down trees by gnawing their way all the way around the tree trunk.
Trapping the beavers, like other organizations have done in the past is not something that the East Bay Regional Park District would even consider, since the idea of the Delta Science Center is to keep everything in their natural habitat and observe the natural environment. Trapping regulations have been enacted to protect beavers, since they almost became extinct in some areas in the early 1900s. Traders at the time made a great deal of money selling beavers pelts and meat.
The beaver prefers habitats near water. They love aspen, birch, willow, cottonwood, basswood, and poplar trees, all which can be found lining the Delta waterways. The trees are used as building material as well as food. Beavers are vegetarians. They eat cattail shoots, parts of pond lilies and other aquatic vegetation, and trees. They don’t really eat the wood, just the bark. An adult beaver can fell a tree 10 inches in diameter in about six minutes.