An odd love story to chew on this Valentine’s Day

Editor's Note: This is an excerpt from WBUR's Saturday morning newsletter, The Weekender. If you like what you read and want it in your inbox, sign up here. 

Love is in the air this Valentine’s Day — and not just for humans.

February is mating season for beavers. North America's largest rodents now number tens of thousands in wetlands across Massachusetts (nearly everywhere but the Cape). But they likely wouldn't be here at all had it not been for an ill-fated love triangle more than 90 years ago.

For over a century, beavers were basically extinct in Massachusetts. The population was wiped out by the late 1700s by unregulated hunting and trapping due to the fur industry, Becky Cushing Gop, regional director for Mass Audubon West, told me. And it stayed that way until the 20th century, when Morris Pell, the warden of a then-newly formed wildlife sanctuary called Pleasant Valley in Lenox, decided to do something about it.

In 1932, Pell brought three beavers from New York’s Palisades Interstate Park to Pleasant Valley for his repopulation effort: A male named Paul Bunyan, a female named Paula Bunyan, and a second male named Big Swede.

He didn’t bring beavers to Massachusetts just to have them; according to Gop, he began the repopulation effort because of the habitats that beavers support.

“Before the beavers, the landscape looked really different,” said Gop. Due to European settlement, many of the state’s (and the country’s) wetlands were wiped out. But beavers can help restore them, with their trademark dams. For example, Pleasant Valley’s Yokun Brook wasn’t dammed, “so it didn't have these wetlands that had standing water that could support a diversity of animals and different bird species,” Gop said.

Pell kept an extensive log of the three beavers’ behaviors. “They’re almost written like he wanted to make it into a book someday,” Gop said. “Like a little bit of a romantic beaver novel. There’s a lot of drama.”

According to Gop, Pell’s log said that Paul and Paula “immediately became mates.” And because beavers are understood to be monogamous, there wasn’t room for Big Swede to muscle in. So Big Swede left to go build his own dam, and possibly in search of another mate, until a tragedy struck a year later.

Paul Bunyan (the beaver) died of “serious back injuries” in 1933. (The origins of the injury remain a mystery.) Big Swede, still in the area, “found Paula alone after Paul had died,” according to Pell’s log. “The two became a pair and successfully raised three kits in 1934,” it added.

Big Swede and Paula Bunyan’s beaver colony proved to be a boon. In his log, Pell said the animals “surpassed all expectations in building a dam, and their ventures proved to be the chief drawing card of the sanctuary during my entire stay here.”

Big Swede and Paula’s kits moved on and built their own dams, and the burgeoning colonies were able to attract more beavers from nearby New York and Connecticut to Massachusetts. Beavers will cross state lines “if the habitat is right,” said Gop.

“ These beavers had a huge role in building out the beaver population,” Gop said.

“I wouldn't say every beaver in Massachusetts is their descendant,” she added. "I could imagine, over time, genetics from other adjacent beaver colonies making their way in.”

The wetlands Paula and Big Swede created also helped increase the area’s biodiversity. Pell wrote that prior to the beavers, the Pleasant Valley sanctuary was “embarrassingly devoid of bird species,” said Gop. But today, there are many, “especially in the wetlands,” she said.

Busy beaver families are considered among the “most watchable” wildlife at Pleasant Valley now. And come late April and into May, you should be able to spot the result of the beavers’ Valentine’s Day dates (i.e., beaver kits) toddling around Yokun Brook. It’s a sweet sight made possible by protection measures, said Gop, and of course, Big Swede and Paula’s relationship.

P.S. — Want to see Pleasant Valley’s beavers for yourself? Mass Audubon is hosting its family-friendly “Beaver Detectives” trail hike this Monday, Feb. 16 in Lenox. Can’t make it? They’ll also have an adults-only “Sunset Beaver Watch” in early April.