beaver (thing)

The European beaver is alive and well
OR
What version of Google do you use?

I was reading a recent factual writeup in this node in which the statement was made:

. . . and as the European beaver was hunted to extinction . . .”

A bit further I read:

”Most fortunately, unlike the European beaver, the North American beaver managed to survive. . . “

Hey! Whoa! Since when has the European beaver been extinct?

I lived in Europe until a few years ago. I often saw beaver and thought nothing of it other than, “Oh, that splash was a beaver that dove into the water just now!” This was in the Rhône Valley of southern France and I was walking in the wildlife preserve that encompasses the 53 kilometer CNR barge canal in the Drôme/Vaucluse region. The beaver, known in France as a “castor”, was one of the protected animals in the preserve.

Puzzled, I turned to the French version of Google. Amazing what can be found in a search for “castor”.

There were a few false starts. Castor, (Alpha Geminorum), 20th brightest star in the sky, linked with Pollux, both being twin warriors of classic mythology. Castor is also “an Open Source data binding framework for Java”. And there is the castor bean which grows in Africa. Poisonous, but not a beaver.

One German site looked interesting, mainly because of a photo of some rather beefy nude Germans in what appeared to be a protest parade. The French translation of the German text showed it had nothing to do with beaver, but concerned the dumping of nuclear waste materials in northern Germany. The Germans tend to get rather passionate about that subject.

One more false start with the site "Le Castor" which proved to be the name of a clothing company specializing in masculine undergarments. Some nice photos of the male body, French in this case, but – again – no dark, furry animals.

Finally, pay dirt! Bienvenue sur le site de Castor et Homme , a website devoted to an association studying the effects of the co-existance of beaver and mankind in the French departments of Drôme and Ardèche. Photographs of beavers, beaver dams, and beaver lodges. Another website, this one for children, quoting Microsoft Encyclopedia and indicating that both species, Castor Canadensis (North America) and Castor fiber (Europe), are to be found in today’s French rivers and lakes.

A bit further on was a Swiss website, Pro Castor, detailing the work of an organization establishing ecopassages in the bottom land of the Orbe region just northwest of Lausanne. Further research shows that most countries in Europe have successfully reintroducing beaver.

This reintroduction has been taking place since the 1960's. If the beaver population of Europe is not as great as that of North America, it is doubtlessly due to the fact that Europe has a much denser human population than does Canada and the northern parts of the United States where beaver are found in abundance in heavily forested areas. The European beaver has a much more limited habitat but it is far from being extinct.

Sources:
www.astro.uiuc.edu/~kaler/sow/castor.html
http://www/castor/org
www.castor.d/13french.html
http://www.lecastor.com/media.php
http://www.castorethomme.org/index.html
www.montoutou.com/Castor.htm
http://darwin.cyberscol.qc.ca/Expo/Zoo/Fiches/Castor.htm
http://www.procastor.ch/membres.htm