May 5, 2024
Dear friends,
Allow me to introduce gifted nature writer Brandon Keim. His latest book, Meet Your Neighbors, will be released on July 16th from W. W. Norton. He writes about the science of animal intelligence, the idea of animal personhood, and what all that means for how we think about nature. His Substack,
contains book-related interviews, commentary, and outtakes. Brandon is one of those Substack writers who, when asked if I might send my questions, wrote right back with, “Send ‘em over.”Today I want to focus on his April 23, 2024 Hakai article, “The Waning Reign of the Wetland Architect We Barely Know”. In it Brandon celebrates the industrious role that muskrats play in relationship with beavers and wetlands, and he interviews the rare few scientists who attempt to decipher the reasons for the precipitous decline of the muskrat population.
He writes, “The sight of a whiskered nose held just about the water, a small bow wave preceding it, never ceased to lift my spirits.” Brandon’s description sounds so familiar. Surely, I must have seen a muskrat, yet, as my mind tours the Granby Gorge and the Farmington River, places where I spent sunny childhood hours, I realize I have not seen a muskrat.
Have you? For weeks, I have been asking my colleagues that question. A fellow Swannanoa River Rights activist films the Swannanoa River daily, noting the light on the water and visits from the Great Blue Heron. He has not seen a muskrat in twelve years of living here. We wondered if human activity at the park and college across the River was a factor.
My friend Zee Berl has worked on river conservation for over half a century. She said, “There was one (muskrat) that lived in Beaverdam Creek behind Creekside, where I used to live in North Asheville. As more and more development went in upstream, water quality decreased, and thus the bug and small crustacean life disappeared. Plus, there were kingfishers and a variety of herons that used to fish that creek. Again, as the years went by, they all disappeared.”
My goals in this essay are to first ~ to lift up Brandon’s work so that you know his writing. I also want to show you muskrats in the light of Western science and Indigenous wisdom, and I want to suggest how Rights of Nature might bring us into kinship and connectivity with our relatives, human and beyond.
First, let’s look at muskrats through Brandon’s research.
Muskrats are prolific breeders. They persisted through “the thoughtless times before adopting federal clean water laws and the advent of environmental agencies in the United States and Canada.” Brandon writes that when he learned that muskrats, as a species, were struggling, the news came as a surprise, but he soon found that the decline had been decades in the making.
“In the 1990s and early 2000s…the number of muskrats caught for their fur by trappers in the eastern United States and Canada started to drop, in some places precipitously. Wildlife managers typically use trapping data to track muskrat populations, but since the popularity of trapping had also dwindled, that seemed a likelier explanation for the downward trend than an actual population decline: after all, muskrats are known for their resilience.”
Once I began researching muskrats for myself, I found their photos and videos everywhere. Muskrats are adorable. They chug across the water, usually with a long cattail or a frond between their teeth. Yes, their teeth actually protude. Their lips are behind their teeth so they can chew underwater. Their eyes have been called beady. but when you find the rare close up photo, their eyes are kind. That’s what I attempted to capture in my gestural sketch.
Muskrats are hard-working creatures of river banks, and wetlands. Sometimes mistaken for beavers, muskrats are smaller, weighing only one or two pounds. While beavers create wetlands; muskrats maintain them. They create habitat and they transport nutrients, which is important in the still waters of wetlands.
Muskrats eat cattails and other plant material. By consuming cattails, they clear space for ducks and birds to cohabitate. Muskrats move nutrients that would have otherwise remained locked in the plants. Their mud huts typically last two years, but as they break down, they provide habitat for birds, turtles, and at least sixty other species.
Brandon explains that the most comprehensive study of muskrats to date was done by Adam Ahlers of Kansas State University and Edward Heske at the University of Illinois. They confirmed that the decline in muskrat numbers was not a result of trapping statistics. In a few states, the decline was between 90 and 99 percent. In 34 US states, the muskrat populations had fallen by at least half.
From Brandon, I learned that trapping, pollution, climate change, and disease have all been studied as possible causes. None have proved powerful enough to cause such a cataclysmic decimation.
quoted Brandon in last week, “the declines could be understood not as the consequence of any one issue but the result of a world made inhospitable by humans.”Brandon interviewed Adam Ahlers, one of the coauthors of the 2017 study who reports that in precolonial times in Illinois, where his research is conducted, an animal could walk 250 meters ( 27.34 yards) in any direction and have a 50% chance of entering a wetland. Roads, farm fields, and housing developments have changed all that. Historically, muskrats could travel via routes created by flooding, but that network has vanished as floodplains have shriveled.
Ahlers says, “If you ask for my most educated opinion of why populations have declined, it’s the loss and degradation of wetlands and the isolation of wetlands. To have a functioning metapopulation, you have to have connectivity.” (A metapopulation consists of a group of spatially separated populations of the same species which interact at some level. Wikipedia)
Brandon writes what few people have written about muskrats. He quotes Professor Crockett from the University of Rhode Island as saying that there have been few broad-reaching studies of muskrats. Muskrats don’t exactly have the cache of, say, a salmon who traverses from the natal stream to the ocean and back to fertilize the riparian banks of his natal stream. Yet muskrats are essential workers.
Here we are. We know muskrats are necessary for wetlands to function, they engineer the habitat and move nutrients. We know that wetlands are necessary for a reasonable habitat for humans and other beings. Wetlands are to land as kidneys are to the body. They filter pollutants, slow the water going into the next artery, and are an integral part of the whole ecosystem. Our shared ecosystem.
We may not know exactly why muskrats are in decline, but we know enough. We know that humans have altered the way that ecosystems function so much so that the habitat of muskrats, and our necessary water conduits - our wetlands are in decline.
My friend Jess Housty, also in Hakai, writes:
“Western science is a curious little sister on this coast, mapping ideas and observations in spaces where Indigenous science has been foundational to kinship-building and ecological balance for millennia. As Indigenous stewards and scientists, we have much we can teach this little sister. Her curiosity and her fresh eyes sometimes show us things in a new light. And often, Western science affirms the stories and knowledge that Indigenous peoples, like the Hailzaqv people, have meticulously tended as living bodies of collective learning since time before memory. Taken together, we can sometimes map bigger patterns than either sibling could see alone.”
While it’s important to continue to ask the questions - where are the muskrats, why the wildfires, why the flooding - it’s more important to change the way we act in kinship with all beings, including water, land, and air.
In many Native American cultures, a brave muskrat is the hero of the creation story. Robin Wall Kimmerer opens Braiding Sweetgrass with the story of Sky Woman falling through a hole in the Skyworld to our watery planet.
“Hurtling downward, she saw only dark water below. But in that emptiness, there were many eyes gazing up at the sudden shaft of light.”
The geese gathered and spread their wings to break Sky Woman's fall. When they could no longer hold her, a turtle floated in to help. Sky Woman stepped onto the dome of his shell. The animals held council; they understood that mud from the bottom of the water was needed to begin the land world for Sky Woman.
“Loon dove first, but the distance was too far and after a long while he surfaced with nothing to show for his efforts. One by one, the other animals offered to help- Otter, Beaver, Sturgeon- but the depth, the darkness, and the pressures were too great for even the strongest of swimmers. They returned gasping for air with their heads ringing. Some did not return at all. Soon only little Muskrat was left, the weakest diver of all. He volunteered to go when the others looked on doubtfully. His small legs flailed as he worked his way downward and he was gone a very long time.”
Muskrat’s limp body finally rose to the surface. When the animals unclenched his fist, a handful of mud was revealed. And so the creation story goes.
Kinship. Connectivity.
I think of my reading, writing, and interactions on Substack as connectivity and kinship. I eagerly await Thursdays because that’s when two keystone nature writers publish:
and .Jason summarized Brandon’s muskrat piece on his Substack. Jason’s Comment section is not to be missed. His exchange with readers amplifies the content of his work and the thoughts of his readers. When I thanked Jason for highlighting Brandon’s muskrats, he responded:
“…And I am glad you’re building on the muskrat and wetland stories. The years ahead, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s mistake on wetlands, worry me.”
As I’ve reported, last May the Supreme Court decimated 50% of the Clean Water Act’s protection for US wetlands. The argument in favor of a Priest Lake couple building on a wetland came down to whether the wetland on their property adjoins a bigger body of water used for transport.
“By narrowing the Act’s coverage of wetlands to only adjoining wetlands, the Court’s new test will leave some long regulated adjacent wetlands no longer covered by the Clean Water Act, with significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States.” Brett Kavanaugh joined Supreme Court liberals in disagreeing with the new wetlands test adopted in May 2023. The Environmental Protection Agency reluctantly enacted the ruling later in 2023.
If federal law does not recognize kinship and connectivity, we rely on states to do the right thing. That is not viable in many states.
Rights of Nature may be our long-term path. Rights of Nature are rights, just like Black Rights, Gay Rights, and Women’s Rights. Giving animate beings rights acknowledges equality consciousness. Rights of Nature gives nature the right to be, survive, flourish, and regenerate.
In the past year, my team, the Swannanoa River Rights, has met with our legal defense fund, local environmental professors, our town planner and stormwater technician, environmental and river nonprofits, and water quality people. We have attended town halls and town council meetings. We wrote a proposed amendment for our town charter, obtained the backing of a State Representative, and made plans to collaborate with the Indigenous-led 7 Directions of Service.
7 Directions of Service is an environmental justice and community organizing collective based on Occaneechi-Saponi homelands in rural North Carolina dedicated to stopping methane fracked gas infrastructure buildouts. Rights of Nature is one of the ways they are standing up for the Haw River. In their words:
“Indigenous people have always viewed the natural world as kin. Animals and rivers are our relatives. The Rights of Nature movement applies this life-honoring perspective to a Western legal framework. By amplifying Indigenous voices and leadership, we help to further the cultural shift necessary for the Rights of Nature movement to spread.” from the Rights of Nature Toolkit, 7directions.com
Along with 7 Directions of Service and Representative Pricey Harrison (sponsor of Rights of Nature in the North Carolina State Legislature), we are taking the long view on getting Rights of Nature written into the Western legal framework. But whatever happens, along the way, we will educate many people about how clean water arrives through their pipes, how we keep that water clean, how the beavers and the muskrats work in kinship as engineers for the wetlands, and how we all can work as kin.
There are many ways to get involved. The environmental problems are huge but we need to keep the conversation going. As
says when asked what to do about the political situation - start small, talk to your neighbor. Our ecosystems need more conversations. We need citizen scientists to record and report what they witness in the natural world.Today a friend wrote: “By the way, saw a heron yesterday. At the intersection of Warren Wilson and the park. It’d been a while. I felt relief.” Note by note, collectively we can build an understanding of how nature works and how we work with our relatives. All of us, together.
As Brandon says, “…after all that muskrats have done for the world, and for us, and all that we have taken from them, we owe them.”
in kinship,
Katharine
Sources:
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Milkweed Press, 2013
The Waning Reign of the Wetland Architect We Barely Know (Hint: Not a Beaver) by Brandon Keim, Hakai Magazine, April 23, 2024
Thriving Together: Salmon, Berries, and People by Jess Housty, Hakai Magazine, April 27, 2021
7directionsofservice.com
Many thanks for the generosity of
, , Jess Housty, and editor-in-chief Graeber🌱
Thank you so much about this informative article. I knew about the essential work beavers do to engineer wetlands, but not the muskrat in maintaining it. But it makes sense in that all species are interconnected. I support the Rights of Nature. The only way to protect Nature is to give it rights, enshrined in human law.
It would be nice if humans generally understood, without laws, the importance of Nature--we are part of it, not outside of it--but if it takes human laws to do so, I am all for it.
Now I feel a connection and a kinship to our beloved muskrat. Thank you for the creative and informative piece on this beloved animal we desperately need in our ecosystem.