Beaver in NY

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By Daniel Trotta

Fri Feb 23, 2:34 PM ET

 

 

 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A beaver has been spotted in New York City for

the first time in more than 200 years, marking the return of an

animal once vital to the city's economy and then nearly hunted to

extinction.

 

Biologists with the Wildlife Conservation Society in recent days have

photographed a North American beaver they named " Jose " in the Bronx

River, a once-filthy waterway that runs through the Bronx Zoo and has

since been cleaned up.

 

" There has not been a sighting of a beaver lodge or a beaver in New

York City for over 200 years. It sounds fantastic, but one of the

messages that comes out of this is if you give wildlife a chance it

will come back, " said John Calvelli, a spokesman for the Wildlife

Conservation Society, which operates the Bronx Zoo.

 

The Bronx was once synonymous with urban decay and by the 1970s the

Bronx River was used as a dumping ground that was virtually choked

off with refuse.

 

But residents and the city government began to clean it up, an effort

aided by $14.6 million (7.4 million pounds) in federal funding

secured since 2000 by U.S. Rep. Jose Serrano (news, bio, voting

record) of the Bronx.

 

Biologists named the beaver Jose in Serrano's honour, Calvelli said

on Friday.

 

Beaver pelts drove the economy of the former New Amsterdam, when New

York City was a Dutch trading post full of trappers. The animal

appears on the city seal, which in turn appears on the city flag.

 

Records show the Dutch purchased 7,246 beaver pelts in 1626 and that

by 1671 the renamed New York of British rule traded more than 80,000

pelts a year, Calvelli said.

 

By 1800, beavers were no longer seen east of the Mississippi River

and they were nearly extinct by 1930. Today the species has recovered

so much that it has returned to its traditional range, Calvelli said.

 

(Editing by Doina Chiacu)