Local conservationists are building fences around trees in wetlands across West Virginia and beyond to protect them from beavers and promote coexistence between species.
Donning rain boots and gloves, volunteers trudged across a Charles Town wetland Tuesday to prepare the habitat for a pair of unexpected residents.
Jefferson County’s Cool Spring Preserve is currently home to at least two beavers, possibly mates, according to local conservationists. If trail camera photos did not offer proof enough, their presence is made clear through bite marks on trees and a growing number of dams in Bullskin Run, the local stream.
Beavers are native to wetlands across North America, including those in West Virginia. But they were hunted to near-extinction during the 18th century fur trade. With fewer people hunting them for their pelts, beavers are growing in population across the continent. According to many conservationists, that’s a good thing.
Alison Zak serves as founder and executive director of the Human-Beaver Coexistence Fund. The group develops nonlethal strategies to manage beaver populations across the mid-Atlantic.
Zak said that beavers play a key role in bolstering biodiversity, storing groundwater and filtering pollutants in wetland ecosystems. But they also bring what she describes as “beaver problems,” which fall into two main categories: flooding and tree damage.
When beavers build dams, they can redirect the flow of water and prompt flooding. This can disturb roadways and personal property, so conservationists often fence off culverts so beavers cannot disrupt the flow of water with their dams.
Dams have appeared along Bullskin Run, a stream that cuts through Cool Spring Preserve in Charles Town. Local conservationists say it is the work of a pair of beavers. Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Beavers can also chew trees that protect rivers from erosion, as well as saplings planted as part of reforestation efforts. In response, conservationists build wire fences around the bases of trees that need to be protected from local beavers.
That is what brought a team of volunteers onto the preserve Tuesday: to help build fences that ensure trees and beavers can coexist in West Virginia and to strengthen wetland ecosystems.
“A lot of people aren’t aware beavers are around unless, all of a sudden, they come across very obvious signs of beavers, maybe even causing problems on their property,” Zak said. “But also, we’re seeing an increase in tolerance toward beavers, and people wanting to use nonlethal management and wanting to coexist.”
Tuesday’s volunteers placed new wire frames around the bases of trees with overly tight fences or no fences at all. They took particular care to cover saplings, and to give trees enough space to grow freely.
KC Walters, associate director of conservation at Potomac Valley Audubon Society, organized Tuesday’s event. She said that coexistence strategies like these help people come together to solve environmental problems.
“It’s not just conservation, and not just about the relationship with wildlife,” she said. “It’s also about the relationships of the human organizations that exist in keeping us all working together for a common goal.”
Zak said she hopes volunteers left Tuesday’s event with a better understanding of how conservation works.
“I hope they got a little taste of how complex it can be, but how also doable it is,” she said.
Lily Davis unlinks segments of an old wire fence around the base of a tree at Cool Spring Preserve in Charles Town. Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
This week on Inside Appalachia, we remember Travis Stimeling. The author, musician and educator left a deep mark on Appalachian culture, and the people who practice and document it. And, grab your dancing shoes and learn about a movement to make square dance calling more inclusive. Plus, it’s not just you. There are more deer than ever these days. A writer explores the long, complicated entwinement of people and our wild kin.
Inside Appalachia remembers Travis Stimeling. The author, musician and educator left a deep mark on Appalachian culture, and the people who practice and document it.
And, grab your dancing shoes and learn about a movement to make square dance calling more inclusive.
Plus, it’s not just you. There are more deer than ever these days. A writer explores the long, complicated entwinement of people and our wild kin.
You’ll hear these stories and more this week, Inside Appalachia.
Remembering Travis Stimeling, A Musician, Scholar And Mentor
Travis Stimeling, a WVU professor and noted scholar of traditional Appalachian music, died in their home on Nov. 14, 2023.
Photo Credit: Ellen Linscheid
Travis Stimeling carried the torch for bluegrass and traditional music in Appalachia.
It was a shock when the author, musician and West Virginia University (WVU) professor died abruptly in November at the age of 43. News of their passing prompted an outpouring of remembrances from colleagues, former students and friends.
Some shared their stories with Folkways Reporter Zack Harold, who brought us this remembrance.
Traditional Dance Callers Updating For Inclusivity
A multi-generational group of dancers follows Becky Hill’s calling at the Augusta Heritage Center in July 2023.
Photo Credit: Lydia Warren/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
The use of they/them pronouns signals more than a change in language; it’s also a cultural change that allows for people to be identified as they see themselves. And, it’s happening even in the region’s dance halls.
Folkways Reporter Lydia Warren brought us the story.
The Age Of Deer
Erika Howsare explores our relationship to deer, which has been long and complicated.
Courtesy Photo
Few animals are as polarizing as the white tail deer. They’re graceful and majestic — and kind of cool to see up close. But they can also ravage gardens, and drivers hit countless deer every year.
Yet, there seem to be more deer than ever.
Erika Howsare is the author of The Age of Deer: Trouble and Kinship with Our Wild Neighbors.
Producer Bill Lynch spoke with Howsare.
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Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert. Other music this week was provided by Amythyst Kiah, Watchhouse, John Blissard, Yonder Mountain String Band and Larry Rader.
Bill Lynch is our producer. Zander Aloi is our associate producer. Our executive producer is Eric Douglas. Kelley Libby is our editor. Our audio mixer is Patrick Stephens.
Sloping down from the WVU Coliseum to the banks of the Monongahela River, the university’s Core Arboretum comprises about 100 acres of woodland. A space on campus dedicated to trees, it’s an ideal setting for the WVU PawPaw festival.
For the past several years, on a warm autumn afternoon at the end of September, the parking lot of West Virginia University’s Coliseum fills with visitors. But they don’t come to watch basketball.
Sloping down from the Coliseum to the banks of the Monongahela River, the university’s Core Arboretum comprises about 100 acres of woodland. A space on campus dedicated to trees, it’s an ideal setting for the WVU PawPaw festival.
“It’s an event to celebrate the pawpaw fruit, which is the largest fruit native to North America, the largest fruit native to this region” Zach Fowler said. “And it’s a spectacularly delicious and actually quite common fruit that, for whatever reason, a lot of people these days have not eaten.”
Fowler is the director of the arboretum and the organizer of the festival. He said the pawpaw’s appeal isn’t in being exotic, but in being incredibly common.
“It’s not at all a rare tree, it’s just a lot of people haven’t eaten the fruit for whatever reason.” Fowler said. “It’s kind of important for people to understand that there’s this wonderful thing out there on the landscape that’s been growing here for 1000s of years.”
Free to the public, the festival’s biggest draw is the opportunity for newcomers and acolytes alike to try cultivated pawpaws, specifically those grown and developed by Neal Peterson. Peterson has dedicated decades to tracking down and creating named pawpaw varieties, selected for flavor and texture.
The samples of river-named pawpaws served at the festival: Shenandoah, Allegheny, Potomac and Wabashes, were all developed by Peterson. His bringing them to the festival is something of a full circle.
“Neil was a graduate student here in the 70s,” Fowler said. “Believe it or not, the first pawpaw that Neil had ever tasted, he tasted here at the arboretum down near the river in the wild growing pot balls that have been here for 1000s of years.”
Fowler said the festival is a product both for, and by, the community, and dozens of volunteers help to ensure attendants can taste the titular fruit. Despite cutting up dozens of pawpaws for others to try, student volunteer Dominic Moll has yet to try one himself.
A box of pawpaws waiting to be cut up as samples for festivalgoers at the WVU PawPaw Festival Sept. 30, 2023.
Dominic Moll prepares samples of pawpaws at the WVU PawPaw Festival Sept. 30, 2023.
“This is the Shenandoah,” Moll said as he raised a slice of pawpaw for his first taste.
He chewed for a moment, although the fruit’s soft texture offered very little resistance.
“It does taste kind of mango, it has like that mango texture with it,” Moll said. “It’s very sweet. And it’s actually it’s really nice.”
The festival draws people in from near and far, and Fowler says the furthest traveler he met Saturday was from upstate New York. Yoshi Henderson had a shorter drive, but still came down from Pittsburgh after discovering a pawpaw tree near his office just a week ago.
“Never heard of it, didn’t know there was like a tropical fruit native to the region,” he said “I’ve been on a mission to try it. And then I just found out that this was going on, so we drove down and finally got to try it. I’m super excited. Now, we’re going to plant a tree. And hopefully in a few years, maybe we’ll get some fruit out of it.”
Attendants could also listen to music, sample food made with pawpaws, buy their own trees and learn more about how to cultivate their own pawpaw.
Nick Elmore, a chemistry student from Martinsburg, also volunteered at the festival. He said he grew up with pawpaws and didn’t expect them to draw so much fanfare.
“There’s not really a festival for like bananas or other fruits, you know?” Elmore said. “The pawpaw I guess is like a cultural thing around here. They only grow in certain areas, and there’s even a town called Paw Paw, West Virginia. So it definitely is like a local thing that I guess we need to hold on to.”
Ultimately, Fowler said the fruit and the festival both are a great way to get people to interact with nature and the land’s history on a deeper level.
“I really love it as sort of this golden egg for connecting people to nature,” he said. “When I go down and I gather the fruit and bring them to the top of the hill it does give me chills sometimes to think about the ancient nature of this and how many times that people sit on this hillside and eat pawpaws through history and it really is a very exciting and interesting thing.”
Known as “Big Cove,” The Nature Conservancy West Virginia State Director Thomas Minney said the land will improve the region’s recreation by opening up new land to the public, but also by protecting its natural beauty.
International conservation organization The Nature Conservancy has acquired close to 2,000 acres bordering the Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge for protection.
Known as “Big Cove,” The Nature Conservancy West Virginia State Director Thomas Minney said the land will improve the region’s recreation by opening up new land to the public, but also by protecting its natural beauty.
“While The Nature Conservancy holds it, it’s going to be open to passive recreation. Hiking, hunting, those sorts of traditional uses that have been on the property are going to still be there and available to the public,” he said. “There’s a lot of work that’s going on in the Davis to Thomas area to look at how you create a recreational friendly and highly important place that people enjoy visiting. We hope that this comes in tandem with conserving really, really important biodiversity areas as a huge complement to those other plans.”
The Nature Conservancy is exploring how to work with the local stakeholders to improve trail access areas.
“Connecting areas such as going from A Frame Road, down Brown Mountain and into the northern ends of the current wildlife refuge,” Minney said. “We continue to think and invest.”
Big Cove sits in the northern end and is the crown of Canaan Valley, a biodiversity rich and climate resilient landscape. It expands habitat from the Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge that features many rare species that occupy the forest, stream and wetland habitats in this area.
“What makes Canaan Valley and the highlands of West Virginia really interesting is what elevation does for us. When you’re looking from 3,000, to over 4,000 feet, it is creating an environment that’s more like Canada,” Minney said. “In the valley itself, something that’s really interesting is the circumneutral wetland, which means it’s on limestone. And where you have an occurrence of wetland on limestone like that it has a lot of rare plants that are associated with it. It’s one of the most vital areas for biodiversity here in the Appalachians.”
Minney said that as local climates continue to change, the Canaan Valley’s unique elevation and moisture forms a “landscape highway” where migration of unique species can occur and ensure the Appalachians remain connected north to south.
He also said the Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge and the newly acquired Big Cove are central to the region’s drinking water supply.
The U.S. Forest Service’s Forests to Faucets analysis identifies the landscape as in the second highest of 10 categories for national surface drinking water importance.
In a new book titled, The Southern Wildlife Watcher: Notes of a Naturalist, author Rob Simbeck explores the wonders and curiosities of wild animals you might be taking for granted, like coyotes, American Robins, or even often underappreciated earthworms.
The book features essays on 36 animals — 12 each that inhabit land, water and air — alongside humans throughout the southeastern United States.
Eric Douglas spoke with him to learn more.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Douglas: Tell me why you wanted to focus our attention on some of those more common animals.
Simbeck: I think, too often, we are prone to think of the outdoors as something special that you’ve got to drive somewhere to see. And that the wildlife really worth paying attention to is the bald eagle or to see dolphins when you’re at the beach, or to catch a glimpse of a bobcat or something — which we hardly ever do.
For me, the thing that’s special about the natural world is that it’s all around us all the time. We as humans, are set in the midst of a natural world with too many things that we can take for granted. And one of the overriding purposes for the book is just to make us appreciate that and to see what responsibility we have as wildlife watchers to respect what is around us.
Douglas: Read for me that last paragraph in your description of the American Robin.
Simbeck: Wildlife watchers often thrive on sightings of the rare and unusual, but experience teaches us an ever-renewed appreciation for the ordinary. For those of us in the United States, the American Robin is quintessentially ordinary, but its quirky presence can serve as a quotidian delight, a constant reminder of the riches to be found all around us.
Douglas: How does that exemplify nature for you?
Credit Courtesy photo
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Author Rob Simbeck.
Simbeck: As a kid growing up in the mountains of Pennsylvania, the most common bird there was the American Robin. You could not look out your window or walk out your door on a spring, summer or fall day and not see a robin hopping across the grass looking for something to eat. It’s easy to look at that with jaundiced eyes and not catch the magic about them. I mean, every time I really study one in the yard here in Tennessee, I’m amazed by the interplay of black and brown and white and the way the white shows on the underside of the tail and things like that. They are a really pretty bird. If there were very few of them, I think we would be more cognizant of that.
Douglas: In Appalachia we don’t have the big fauna, we don’t have the big animals that you have out west. What are the favorite things you like to see in the Appalachians?
Simbeck: Just spending a day in the woods with the warblers in the thick woods of Pennsylvania and West Virginia can be delightful, although as I say in the book, I’m more of a woodpecker guy. The warblers are at the top of the trees, they’re eating worms, they’re flitting around and it’s hard to see them. By the time you do, you’ve got to think “Which field mark was that?” as opposed to the woodpecker that announces their presence. The pileated especially will tear big hunks of bark off trees and Yo-Ho-Ho their way around the forest.
Between the big critters like that, and the things you find in the water, from the bullfrogs, to the crayfish, which was my first view of reproduction was a crayfish in a big wash tub that we had put it in, I have memories all up and down the food chain.
Douglas: You’re very conversant in the natural world, but this isn’t just you and your opinions. You use a lot of experts and references throughout the book as well.
Simbeck: This book has two components. Part one is “Hey, guess what I saw yesterday?” Part two is “Let’s talk to somebody who really knows their stuff” and let’s learn as much as we can, as interestingly as we can in 1,000 to 1,200 words per species. There are about 50 experts that I drew on.
Douglas: The book can be read front to back as a book, but it’s also a reference tool. Somebody who is an aspiring naturalist can say “I just saw a woodpecker. Let me look up what he says about the Pileated Woodpecker or the American Robin.” It becomes a reference tool.
Simbeck: It’s not designed as a field guide or anything like it. It’s more of a conversation book, but at the same time, the natural history I include should tell you when and how they reproduce, anything notable in the way they attract a mate, how many eggs they lay.
Everything about this is designed to be both conversational and useful. I would love for people to pick it up and be excited about the robin again before they take it too much for granted.
The essays in the book were originally published as bi-monthly column in South Carolina Wildlife Magazine but were updated for this book. The book is now available from the University of South Carolina Press.
This is part of a series of interviews with authors who are from, or writing about, Appalachia.
In a quiet neighborhood in southeast Ohio, Talcon Quinn and her 12-year-old apprentice Juniper Ballew have revived an age-old tradition with just three ingredients: a deer skin, some water and a handful of animal brains. They have transformed a hairy, fleshy animal skin into buckskin, a buttery soft material stronger than fabric.
In a special report as part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Project, reporter Clara Haizlett met with Quinn and Ballew to find out why they practice the tradition of brain tanning.
Quinn has trained Ballew in the art of brain tanning, through an apprenticeship program with the Ohio Arts Council. While most modern tanneries use chemicals to tan, Quinn and Ballew use the traditional method of soaking the hide in animal brains.
Credit Clara Haizlett/ West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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In the final stages of the tanning process, Talcon examines her hide while Juniper sets up the work space.
Brain tanning requires a strong back and a stronger stomach, patience and some serious elbow grease. To tan one hide it takes around 16 hours of intense labor extended over multiple days.
Quinn’s workshop is located out of her garage at her home, which is in a quiet neighborhood on the outskirts of Athens, Ohio.
Holding a deer skin, Quinn instructed her apprentice to “find the neck, find the membrane side, and what I’d like you to do is go down the spine, and put your weight into the cable.”
Quinn coached her apprentice through a step called cabling, a technique for softening the hide. At this stage in the process, the deer skin was slippery and limp, resembling a slimy blanket. Following Quinn’s lead, Ballew leaned back and pulled at the hide, abraiding it against a wire cable. Back and forth she yanked at the deer skin, one foot in front of the other.
Both Quinn and Ballew are from southeast Ohio, a cradle of forests, rivers, lakes and the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Growing up in the region, Quinn spent a lot of time outdoors, developing a deep appreciation for her natural environment. In her early twenties 20s she began providing more of her own food by fishing, hunting, and picking up roadkill.
Prior to adoption of these practices, Quinn was a vegetarian, then a vegan. Yet in spite of this shift in lifestyle, she continued to set high ethical standards for herself. Quinn decided that if she was going to source her own meat, she wanted to be respectful and use all of the animal. That is what led her to brain tanning.
“I think because I’ve always been a craftsperson and I’m not easily squeamish, I just took to it really easily and fell in love with it in ways,” Quinn said. “I mean there’s times where I don’t like it at all because it gets smelly.”
Credit Clara Haizlett/ West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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Talcon wears a buckskin bikini that she tanned and sewed.
Quinn sources her hides from local game processors where animal carcasses are often just thrown away after the meat is processed. After skinning the deer, she starts tanning, transforming the throw away hides into bags, clothing, and knife sheaths. She sells these unique pieces online to a diverse group of customers. Quinn also teaches brain tanning to learners of all ages and identities. Her favorite class to teach is the buckskin bikini top class.
“The bikini top class was passed down to me and it’s been this really beautiful thing,” Quinn said. “It’s people of all different body shapes coming together to make something very sacred and beautiful for their body, and to encourage them to honor themselves and feel sexy.”
By sharing brain tanning with customers and students, Quinn hopes to encourage a more respectful relationship between humans, animals and the environment.
“It’s heavy. It’s heavy work,” she said. “And there’s a lot of respect and like gratitude and even a sense of grief for the loss of the animals or the loss of a spirit. But I also really believe that everything continues on and by continuing on it lives on. That’s the one thing I hope people see when they see my work, that it’s a lot of humbling respect that I put into it.”
When Quinn found out about the Ohio Arts Council apprenticeship program, she saw the opportunity to pass on the tradition of brain tanning to a young person in her community. Ballew belongs to the Potawatomi Tribe, a Native American group centralized in the Great Lakes region. Although Ballew was introduced to tanning at a young age, she never had formal training in the skill. Now under Quinn’s tutelage, Ballew has made her own buckskin medicine pouch. Ballew plans to incorporate the medicine pouch into the regalia that she wears at tribal powows in Michigan. She said that brain tanning, no matter how obsolete it might appear, still has value in today’s society.
Credit Clara Haizlett/ West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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Juniper shows off her tanned hide which she will sew into a medicine pouch,
“There is so much out there that has like shriveled up and died because people don’t think it’s valued enough,” Ballew said.
For Ballew, brain tanning is about connecting with her Potawotami ancestors and their way of life.
“The great thing with how Native Americans hunt is that they take one and they’re satisfied with it because they use all of it and what they don’t use goes back to the earth,” she said.
In Native cultures around the world, brain tanning was an ordinary practice, including here in Appalachia. In 18th century America, European settlers and Native Americans often traded food and supplies for buckskins or “bucks” for short. According to regional legends, this is where the slang word “buck,” meaning “dollar” comes from. Yet as the fur trade became commercialized and Native Americans were removed from their lands, traditional tanning methods fell by the wayside, displaced by industrial chemical tanning. Today the majority of global leather comes from China and instead of using natural materials as tanning agents, most modern tanneries use chemicals.
Although tanning has changed a lot over the years, Ballew said that traditional tanning still holds important cultural value.
“My uncle, when we FaceTimed the other day, he called it ‘learning the language of his grandmother,’” Ballew said. “Because she was taken by the settlers and taught English and forced to cut all her hair off. He was learning what she had been forced to forget.
Credit Clara Haizlett/ West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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Juniper and Talcon display their finished brain tanned buckskins.
“I want to inspire kind of a new definition of Appalachia, particularly around here where it’s just so poor,” Ballew said. “And I want the youth to grow up knowing that there are these skills that were kind of lost but they’re not forgotten. We still have it and we can make it something new that viable for today.”
Although they have come to the practice for different reasons, together Quinn and Ballew are reviving the tradition of brain tanning, hour by hour and hide by hide.
This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council. The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.
