from Faye Stoner, August 10, 2007, regarding the beaver evidence of December 2005 --- The beaver sign that we saw where Zeeb Rd. goes over the Huron - the area is known as the Burns-Stokes Preserve - was definitely freshly made when we saw it. The first time I saw it was in fall of 2005. There was fresh sign again last summer and fall. I am part of a group of people that practice animal tracking and nature awareness, and the group took a walk there to just to decipher what we could, we went intentionally late enough in the day to have daylight to look at signs but to be there as darkness came to see if we could see the beaver, and some of the group went on their own at times to try and see the beaver itself. As far as I know, no one ever actually saw the animal, but one woman, Nancy Stokes, one of the former owners of the land, thinks she might have caught a glimpse one time. Of course, preserve visitors might have seen the beaver and we wouldn't necessarily have heard about it. I / the tracking group was aware that there are bank beaver (versus pond/dam building beaver); we were looking hard for burrows, plunge holes, tracks around holes, etc. We found several holes on the edge of the river but did not see anything that told us beavers used these versus muskrats. The signs that were obvious, no doubt whatsoever, were small and medium sized trees chewed down, lots of wood chips lying at the base of chewed areas, and branches that had been dropped or dragged into the water that showed lots and lots of bark areas that had been chewed off. Both fall of 2005 and 2006 showed fresh sign of beaver activity. Faye Stoner Parks Naturalist Washtenaw County Parks (734) 971-6337 X318 stonerf(AT)ewashtenaw.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------- from http://www.hrwc.org/4didyouknow.htm April 2006 - Beaver: Last December, participants in the first county-led hike on Washtenaw County’s newly purchased Stokes-Burns property (which borders the Huron River in Scio Township) learned from County Naturalist Faye Stoner that they had a surprise awaiting them. Suzy Morse, one of the hikers, recounted her observations of beaver (Castor canadensis) activity. "We saw new and older stumps that clearly were left by beavers chewing down trees, with characteristic teeth chip marks." No beaver dams or lodges were seen in the area, so the hikers pondered where the beavers responsible for the chewing might live. In fact, some beavers live in burrows in stream banks with underwater entrances. If you want to see these amazing stumps, and perhaps catch a glimpse of a beaver, the park is located on the west side of Zeeb Road on the north side of the river. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ann Arbor News November 21, 2007 Dave McVety BEAVERS BEHIND FRESHLY FALLEN TREES They've been busy. Of course, that's what beavers are all about. Trees down. Half-chewed trunks. Bark gone. Wood chip piles everywhere. A spot along the Huron River in Scio Township that has been visited by beavers for years shows signs of activity in the past six months like never before. At least 20 trees are freshly fallen in Washtenaw County's Burns-Stokes Preserve, a 29-acre site just west of Zeeb Road. "A lot of trees went down this summer," said John Russell, a county Parks and Recreation Commission committee member who has visited the site for years. "I don't know if that's because there are more of them or if they're staying longer. You never see them." Russell, a member of the commission's Natural Areas Technical Advisory Committee that helped purchase the site, said experts figure the beavers come from a colony upstream near Proud Lake in Oakland County. The animals are looking for homes of their own and stop at this site because aspen, their favorite food, grow there, he said. But they're not likely to stick around. As busy as these beavers are, the Huron River is just too wide at the site to build dams, a key step in building safe lodges for their young.