By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor

Beavers are beneficial – not a nuisance.

That’s a big message carried on their behalf by “Freelance Beaver Detective” Pamela Adams, who was featured speaker at this afternoon’s weekly lunch meeting of the Rotary Club of West Seattle (WSB sponsor).

She gave attendees a crash course in beaver biology, first explaining how she happened into her intense interest in urban beavers – particularly in eastern West Seattle’s Longfellow Creek, where she says five beaver families, 30+ beavers, are currently living. “This is becoming quite a bit of research.” She’s also now the subject of a film (watch the trailer here).

She’s found all sorts of other wildlife, including salamanders, and says the beaver dams have helped increase the Longfellow Creek coho because the water is cleaner near their dams. Beavers are “like a probiotic in our watershed” – and they’re on the upswing, after they were all but eradicated over the centuries by humans who didn’t want them around.

They live in family groups and are monogamous – they’ll mate for life. Two of the local families live on the golf course. They also prefer to stay in the water; they are “not always destroyers of trees,” she reiterated. “Their flat scaly trail stores their fat – and that’s their imprints.” Their tails include “a little vertebrae.” They slap their tails to communicate. Their construction includes many different structures and challenges. “They don’t usually live in the dams,” she noted, Most of the construction work is done by the females.

Longfellow Creek was devoid of beavers 30+ years ago, according to a city biologist report that Adams found, but then one was sighted at a creek celebration on April 15, 2000. Flash forward to last May, when she helped a biologist release a baby beaver that needed a new family. A few hours later, an adult beaver showed up and took it to join the rest of the family. “When you see them in person … it’s like you’re seeing a kind of divinity.”

She says she’s trying to get city departments to work together to stop destroying/displacing the Longfellow dams, given their ecological benefit. Beavers benefit birds too, she agreed after a Rotarian brought that up during the Q&A sections. Find out more about Adams’ work (and see videos – our clip above is mostly a chance to hear her short talk, as the projection screen was partly blocked) on her website.

Also at the Rotary Club’s weekly meeting:

EARL CRUZEN SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENTS: Four students from the Automotive Technology program at South Seattle College (WSB sponsor) took turns at the podium to thank Rotarians for the tool sets that are at the heart of the scholarship, which one recipient said was “everything that I needed to get started in the automotive industry.” (Here’s the story behind the scholarship’s namesake, who died nine years ago.)

GAMBRIELL SCHOLARSHIP: Applications are open now – here’s the link. April 1 is the application deadline.

NEXT WEEK: The meeting next Tuesday (February 17) will have two guests – artist Saya Moriyasu and, just confirmed during today’s meeting, U.S. House Rep. Pramila Jayapal (who is a West Seattle resident when not in D.C.).

The Rotary Club of West Seattle meets at noon Tuesdays most weeks at the West Seattle Golf Course. Guests can inquire about checking out meetings – find out how here.