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Tag: river

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I'm suddenly interested in willow trees. From Reasons to be Cheerful: The beauty of lining a river with willow.

In the Stone Age, Neolithic folks used willow branches and mud to build roundhouses for their families. Jump forward several thousand years and European farmers were fashioning panels of stitched willow, called hurdles, to fence their farms or screen their gardens. Meanwhile, Native Americans constructed frames of black willow stakes and branches for the sweat lodges where their spirits were purified.

Today, dozens of species of willow are fitting into the toolkits of ecologists and conservationists, who find these trees fine specimens for preventing the decimation of the Ohio River Basin. By incorporating willow, their aim is to minimize erosion while keeping its seven major tributaries as free of pollutants as possible.

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I am so fond of beavers, so this Guardian article delighted me: First wild beaver spotted in Norfolk for 400 years.

A wild beaver has been spotted in Norfolk for the first time since beavers were hunted to extinction in England at the beginning of the 16th century.

It was filmed dragging logs and establishing a lodge in a “perfect beaver habitat” on the River Wensum at Pensthorpe, a nature reserve near Fakenham in Norfolk.

It is the first time a free-living beaver has been recorded in the county since the species began to re-establish itself in the English countryside in 2015, when a litter of wild kits was born in Devon.

How cool is that?

I hope this beaver will thrive and reproduce. I hope the same for the beavers in my neighbourhood, too!