1st Beaver Spotted in NYC in 200 Years

[jpak]

http://www.wtopnews.com/index.php?nid=456&sid=1070190

NEW YORK (AP) - Beavers grace New York City's official seal. But the industrious rodents have not been seen in the flesh here for as many as 200 years _ until this week.

Biologists videotaped a beaver swimming up the Bronx River on Wednesday. Its twig-and-mud lodge had been spotted earlier on the river bank, but the tape confirmed the presence of the animal itself.

"It had to happen because beaver populations are expanding, and their habitats are shrinking," said Dietland Muller-Schwarze, a beaver expert at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. "We're probably going to see more of them in the future."

Beavers gnawed out a prominent place in the city's early days as a European settlement, attracting fur traders to a nascent Manhattan. The animal appears in the city seal to symbolize a Dutch trading company that factored in the city's colonial beginnings, according to the city's Web site.

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[xchrom]

1. ...

:woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:

now THAT'S what i call good news!

[Benhurst]

2. This is such good news, I shall

refrain from making an off-color joke. Recommended.

[phantom power]

3. These are the new salt-water beavers.

inhabiting the new "saltwater urban estuaries" of the 21st century.

[CrazyOrangeCat]

4. we need a beaver smiley, that's all there is to it.

[shain from kane]

5. Contact PETA..