Mountain Beaver?????

50 yrs a wildlife biologist and don’t recall ever heard of them. Came across a page about them in my old field guide to tracks. Kind of a porcupine without quills. Any of you NWers ever seen one?

Yes
Lots of them

Easy to live trap

Do they have any fur value? Have not ever heard of them in the fur trade either but they might be a niche market not ever talked about out of NW area. Always surprised at the things discovered even after a lifetime of being curious.

Pikas were a surprise first time in the high Rockies but I had heard of them.

Trapped a scad of them when I was a kid.

No fur value, kinda like an oversized gopher.

Didn’t Bob Gilman write about them?

Yes, that was the critter that got Bob working in the wildlife control bizz. Timber companies lose a lot of recent planted Doug fir to them. Standard contracts are for setting up their burrows with 110’s and pay by the acre.

Another interesting tidbit, the fleas that they get are huge. About the size of a wheat grain. I’ve sold the fleas for entomological collectors for decent money.

Finally, Louis and Clark acquired a mountain beaver cloak from a Comconly, a chief of the Chinooks which they took back east.
Finally #2 Out in Oregon they’re more commonly referred to as “boomers”.

Yep. Thats a new one.

This is a tanned one. They burrow like a ground squirrel. They are an ancient critte. They are the only one in their genesis. No other critter in their family.

Never heard of them.

I've seen them in the woods. Usually in coastal mountains (SE Alaska, WA, OR)

Actually I now realize that we saw one’s den with drying vegetation near in highlands of Kings Canyon NP hiking last summer. Fur looks similar to muskrat. Is it as dense, have as heavy a hide? Looks soft though.

Next time you see one in Alaska take some photos. Apparently their know range only includes some of Canada and there's no known population in Alaska.

The fur is dense but I would say shorter. Leather is thicker than a muskrat. Pretty common for them to have white spots on the belly, sometimes the entire belly. I have one that is all white, not an albino though.
Used to be real common around here. Hardly ever see sign of one now. I still get reports they are common closer to the cascades but on the coast seem to have disappeared. When I was trapping coastal Oregon I noticed the same thing. Mystery why this happened. Most of the timber companies used to hire mountain beaver trappers but they have stopped that at least on the coast.
Just to be clear I don't think their drop in numbers is attributable to trapping them. They have disappeared here even on FS land where there never was MB control.

I have trapped them, and last year spring bear hunting my wife spotted some burrows. She is a great help.

https://youtu.be/Hm4vLe88Ejs?si=SW5gbqEosDavUEkh

Here is a short video of them. I figured you could make a good cat bait out of them for the coastal cats.

wws

Humptulips, was your lighter one like the one in my pic? Normal color is the darker one.

One other tidbit about them. They are only found very close to water as they have to drink often.

Interesting ,never heard of them .

I had one for a pet until it ran away,,,,,,(sad face)
Very calm,,, will eat out of your hand..

They destabilize slopes,,,,,that’s is the problem with them
Timber companies hire contractors to remove them,,,,,,WWS more for you…..

Uh-Huh.

The one I have is lighter but not snow white. I have sold a couple like yours for taxi for good money.
Close to water? I have found them clear to the top of the ridge. In fact, one of the rare bit of sign I saw this year was at the very top of a 3000-foot ridge. It does rain a lot here though so close to the clouds. Maybe that is close to water. It sure was wet when I was trapping there.

Pretty rare to see them, most loggers have never seen one. Alive at least. I trapped a few that had eroded a bank putting a house in danger of going into a river, they had spotted one once from the deck right over the burrows. They had to have the whole bank engineered out to build up and save the house. They need to be close to water because there kidneys not very efficient. Kinda a prehistoric animal.

wws

I'm going to push back a little more forcefully on this idea they need to be close to water. Yes, it is very wet here, but we do have dry times, and they were everywhere even a long way from any water during the summer months. Where I grew up, we were easily a half mile from any sort of stream, even a trickle, yet they were around the edge of the yard. Highest ridges had them and they don't travel far.
They are nocturnal is the reason nobody sees them but once in a while they will be out on a very dark stormy day.
They do make a pretty good cat bait. They have a strong musky odor, and, on the coast, they took the place of hares as the primary food source for cats. Our cat population has taken a big drop without them.
I watched one up in a tree one time and it was quite entertaining. They are busy. It would cut a limb off and jump out and head for its burrow and back for another load. Yes, they do climb small trees to cut limbs. Those limbs they will peel just like their namesake.

good read guys, never heard of them

How do they taste?

Interesting stuff Bruce, I've only seen their burrows fairly close to water. You can see their active burrows because they will have ferns partially pulled into them. I don't see many anymore.

I trapped them as a kid and sold them to an old Indian lady but they have no fur value on the fur market. Timber companies used to hire trappers for them and last I heard they had went back to poisoning them again on the coast. I haven't been over there in years, but that may be why you guys aren't seeing many of them any more. Side note, that study that determined that mountain beavers were bobcats primary food in Western Washington is why bobcats were added to the hound ban there. The timber companies (Weyerhauser took the lead) sat in with the antis when they wrote up the initiative and had bobcats added to it, because they wanted all the bobcats they could get to eat mountain beavers, because they ate their little trees.

Yep bearcat, trappers can never get permission to trap bobcats on the the large coastal tree farms because of that.

But the pelts would probably sell at the ITA sales!

is this what they call a marmot sorta a cross between a groundhog(woodchuck)and a beaver

No, marmots are a different animal.

Seen a show on them long ago. They are great hoarders. They even found dead birds in their hoardings at times

There was a time when cats were a good price that I decided to forego beaver trapping and concentrate on cats. I needed bait, so I trapped mountain beaver for bait. You would be surprised what uses their tunnels. Civets, mink, weasels pretty common but also birds. In nasty weather birds including grouse would show up. Weird looking small rodents that I had never seen before, and I even caught a bobcat once that I guess was just feeling around in the hole to see what it could grab.
Anyplace where there is a colony of MBs is a good place for a cat set. One of the rare places where I found some fresh MB digging this year produced two cats.


The smell of them is quite musky. Have to be pretty hungry to get past that.

They are a really interesting animal from a scientific perspective. I believe they are the oldest surviving rodent, pretty much unchanged for the last 55 million years or so. They are studying their kidneys among other things in order to figure out how they can metabolize toxins in the plants they eat that other animals can't; such as rhododendrons. They also host the worlds largest flea that does not exist on any other animal.

I've know of a couple of dogs that have gotten pretty tore up by them, apparently they are more vicious than they look. I guess you'd have to be tough living along side saber tooth tigers, dire wolves and other such critters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_beaver

Never seen as many as there is along the highway 2 corridor in WA. We did some tower units by gold bar where we were seeing them daily