Chew marks stir ‘beaver fever’ in Evanston
BY BOB SEIDENBERG bseidenberg@pioneerlocal.com February 9, 2012 12:56PM
Claire Alden, environmental director at the Ecology Center in Evanston, shows a felled tree in the Ladd Arboretum where a beaver has made its home in a bank burrow along the North Shore Channel on Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2012. Evidence of the beaver was discovered last week. | Ryan Pagelow~Sun-Times Media
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Updated: March 17, 2012 8:11AM
Some bark with chewing marks found recently on the North Shore Channel near the Evanston Ecology Center has center staffers feeling “beaver fever” these days.
Claire Alden, an environmental educator at the center, 2024 McCormick Blvd., said one of city’s parks employees reported spotting what he believes is “fresh beaver chew” a little over a week ago in the Ladd Arboretum area that runs along the canal.
He asked Alden to check it out.
Alden surveyed the area. Sure enough, “it was the most beaver chew we’ve seen in some time,” she said. “We did see some evidence last year but nothing quite as significant as this.”
Moreover, Alden believes she may have discovered the animals’ “bank den.”
“Beavers will build a lodge if the water is not deep enough,” she explained, “but our water is deep enough so they have dug into the side of the bank.
“It’s incredible,” she said about the discovery, which stirred a flurry of Facebook “Like” responses when the news first went up on the on the city’s website, cityofevanston.org.
What’s so exciting about the finding, says Alden, is what it says about the environment.
“Beavers are considered a kind of keystone animal in the environment,” she said. “They have been known to kind of alter ecosystems in a positive way, bringing more birds, fish” and other wildlife, said Alden, a 2003 Evanston Township High School graduate.
Beavers once flourished in Illinois and North America prior to European settlement.
They were almost trapped out of existence in the 1800s, with their pelts especially prized in the manufacture of hats. About a half-dozen years ago, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources took notice of their resurgence. The animals now have few natural predators, and trapping is restricted. The animals can now be found in every county in Illinois, the agency reported.
Alden said some beavers lived in the canal area prior to the start of the Deep Tunnel construction in the 1990s, and probably left because of the disruption caused by the project’s demolition and tunneling work.
“So it’s exciting to see them kind of relocated, building a bank den,” she said. “Usually what happens if they decide to inhabit a place, that means there are kids on the way.
“Who knows? They could end up spanning the canal, as they grow, as the kids grow. Who knows what’s going to happen, but it’s exciting.”
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