Spring: Lessons from Beaver and Maple

Happy Ziisbaakdoke Giizis (Sugaring Moon)! This moon symbolises the approaching end of Winter, as the Ininaatig (Sugar Maple) sap begins to run. As the maple syrup season arrives, it’s important to be mindful of its Indigenous significance, as a flavour agent, a preservative, and a medicine used by many Indigenous peoples centuries, if not millennia, before the arrival of European colonists.

The Sugar Maple, also known by the Kanien’kehà:kà as Wáhta, is a sacred tree. This retelling of the Wáhta teachings, from local Indigenous people in Kingston/Katarokwi, describes them as the leader of the trees; their sap marks the beginning of Spring and the reawakening of Mother Nature. You can listen to a few members of Indigenous communities describe how they feel about Wáhta here:

Join us for our Monthly Walks!

We know lots of you are getting to know us through our newsletter but we’d like to get to know you too. So we’re inviting you for a monthly walk where we can get to know each other and our Earthly kin better.  We’ll walk in natural areas around the city on the fourth Thursday of each month in the late afternoon or evening depending on when dusk arrives. No preparation or registration required, just show up and enjoy!

Our first walk will be on Thursday, March 27th, at 4 pm, and we’ll be walking some of the K&P trail starting at the intersection of Bur Brook Rd and Cordukes Rd, which is marked with number 28 on the City of Kingston’s map. Hope to see you there! Watch for details of future walks in our newsletter or our Instagram page.

Becoming keystone species: learning from Beaver

Through years of exposure to negative news and increasing anxiety over the climate crisis, I, like many others, have fallen into the belief that humans are universally bad for the environment, and that Earth would be better off without us. While this may seem true, it’s actually modern human systems that threaten the environment, not the human species. In this edition of our newsletter, I’ll explore what it means to be sustainable, and how we can become a force for good.

We are a part of Nature.

Before we can discuss how humans can become positive change agents, we need to recontextualise our relationship with nature. Whether consciously or subconsciously, I believe that many of us likely think of ourselves as separate from nature (ego-centric thinking). But we’re animals, just as a chickadee is an animal, or a bear is an animal. Human homes may be built from concrete, steel, or wood, but birds craft their homes from twigs and branches, and mammals construct burrows from soil and stone — these are all materials that occur in nature, humans have simply learned to manipulate them in different ways.

If we want to better understand what gifts we can offer to our environment, we must learn from our Earthly Kin, who are seen as beneficial to their ecosystems. I think a perfect role model is Beaver, who likes to craft ecosystems just as humans do. Beavers are famous for their dams, which they use to create more favourable conditions for living and hunting. These dams also bring many other benefits, such as wildfire protection, water filtration, carbon sequestration, and (perhaps surprisingly) support for salmon.

How do Beaver dams create such positive impacts on their environments? Let’s look at a few aspects:

• Fish: Beaver dam reservoirs create a variety of suitable habitats for salmon by widening the channel, giving them places to hide, to find food, and to grow. Why don’t Beaver dams block fish passage? Well, they can, but native fish species are adapted to these conditions and are generally not blocked by Beaver dams; non-native and invasive species can be blocked, which can actually prove to be beneficial for native fish species. Beavers also depend on fish for food, so making sure that fish can get through and past the dam is mutually beneficial.

• Reservoirs: Beaver dams form reservoirs by backing up river water. Although this disturbs adjacent habitats and kills trees, it also provides a number of benefits. Notably, this flooding creates a source of dead wood, particularly standing dead wood, which a number other species, including about one third of insects, depend upon.

• Sediment flow and erosion: Beaver dams slow down water enough to cause sediments to deposit in the dam’s reservoir. This results in the formation of Beaver meadows, which are diverse, fertile, multi-channelled river regions that fill to form new wetlands.

• Hydrology: Beavers’ dams are built using many different methods and materials, and are adapted to the local conditions of the dam. As a result, beaver dams are very dynamic structures that change with the seasons and over time to create many different flow conditions.

I think it all comes down to Beavers working with their environment, instead of against it. The Ojibwe seven grandfather teachings describe Beavers as symbols of wisdom, who know how to benefit from their environment in sustainable ways, and who know how to listen and respond to the changes around them. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, a member of the Alderville First Nation, describes Beavers’ connections to their environments as follows:

Lessons learned

It’s fascinating to see the wide variety of positive impacts that Beavers have on their ecosystems. Although they build dams for their own needs, Beavers know their role in the cycle of Life, and that they depend on it. This ability to collaborate with the ecosystem is what makes them “ecosystem engineers” and a Keystone species. There’s so much that we can learn from looking at just one species - it’s hard to imagine how much we could discover if we listened to everyone’s stories. I encourage you to draw your own conclusions from this short tale about the Beaver. Here are a couple of things I learned:

• Work cyclically: Beaver dams are built in response to their environment, and also change with their environment. Adapting cyclically to the water, the soil, and the climate allows Beavers to use resources sustainably, never taking too much of anything – ensuring that their habitat lets their Earthly Kin thrive.

• Live within the ecosystem: Beavers understand that they’re a part of their ecosystems, and accept this with humility. They know that if they take too much or give too little, their entire community will be impacted. 

Beavers collaborate with their Earthly Kin, with the Water, and with the Soil, and thereby provide for whole communities. If we keep an open mind, and listen and learn from them, we might be able to find new ways to live within our ecosystems, to work with our environment, and to be better stewards of the Land.

From invasive to keystone

Keystone species have unique gifts that they (intentionally or otherwise) share with their environment, and this allows them to support the web of life around them. Humans have unique gifts too; if you ask Robin Wall Kimmerer, she would probably tell you that gratitude is one of the gifts we can give to the Land. And I agree — there’s a great deal of power in showing our gratitude for our Earthly Kin. I think another gift we have is communication. Communication within our species has allowed us to share knowledge collected over generations, to understand complex topics, and to collaborate on scales that most other species can’t. Our communication enables us to learn, to grow, to change, and to adapt.

You may wonder what humans can achieve through communication that is beneficial to the Land. Lyla June, of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) and European lineages, gives us four examples of this in her TED Talk, which she summarises as:

• Work with nature

• Expand habitat

• Decenter humans

• Design for perpetuity

I encourage you to listen to her whole talk, as there’s so much more to inspire you. But I was most struck by her eloquent description of the Diné concept of Hózhó:

To me, we can only understand our role as a keystone species if we rethink our relationship with Nature. We need to acknowledge our role in Nature, accept that we aren’t above our Earthly Kin, understand our impacts on Nature, and share the gifts we can give to the Earth. In news, and in many parts of our life, we hear about “zero emissions”, “net zero”, “conservation”, and all sorts of other buzzwords which describe a world in which humans essentially don’t exist. Instead of aiming for zero-impact, work towards nature-positive; instead of focusing on conservation, promote survival ecology. Be like Beaver: a change-bringer for good, who provides for their ecosystem by collaborating with Nature and by meeting the needs of their community. I’m reminded of this excerpt from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s article on the Serviceberry:

When we know how to “store our meat” by sharing with and caring for our Earthly Kin, then we truly live up to the name of a keystone species. And it’s not so hard - all we have to do is look and listen to our Earthly Kin and learn from them.

– Robert