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My wildlife biologist friend just forwarded me this article from the Vancouver Sun:
Mountain beaver tops list of our endangered animals
Vancouver Sun, pg B01, 05-Apr-2007
Chances are, if you're like most British Columbians, you've never heard of the mountain beaver.
There are good reasons for this. First, it's one of the most endangered animals in the province, though exactly how endangered it is is not known. And second, because it's so rare and secretive, it's extremely difficult to see one.
But it's out there, and it's worth saving, according to a Simon Fraser University doctoral candidate in biology who, along with dozens of international colleagues associated with the London Zoological Society, has worked out a list of 4,511 mammals which, according to their genetic uniqueness, are most deserving of our help.
In fact, on the society's list of 4,511 animals, which includes such stellar species as the giant panda, the black rhinoceros and the bactrian (two-humped) camel, the mountain beaver ranks 195th, making it the highest ranking Canadian animal of all.
In other words, says Dave Redding, the B.C. mountain beaver ranks as the 195th species most deserving of help from the world's conservation organizations both for its genetic uniqueness and for the fact that it's been around for 40 to 50 million years, something that makes it not only a rare and precious thing, but also the longest-lived rodent in this part of the world.
"What that says is that this is a really valuable species that mustn't be overlooked," says Redding, who is about to lead a similar project to rank the world's endangered birds. "There will always be money going to the big species and here in B.C. to salmon. "But here is another species that we need to think of as important too, but for other reasons."
It turns out, however, that the mountain beaver is neither a beaver nor a mountain dweller. The American explorers, Lewis and Clark, named it erroneously.
However, like the beaver it is a rodent, but unlike the beaver it is tailless and much smaller, about the size of a large gopher. Also like a gopher, it spends most of its time underground, only coming out at night, which makes it almost impossible to see.
At the top of the zoological society's list of rare mammals is the Yangtze River dolphin, so rare and genetically isolated that it may be extinct already.
Following behind from numbers two to 10 are: the long-beaked echidna, the Hispaniolan solenodan, the bactrian camel, the pygmy hippopotamus, the slender loris, the hirola, the long-eared jerboa, the golden-rumped elephant shrew and the bumblebee bat.
For a list of all 4,511 mammals and descriptions of the rarest ones, go to www.edgeofexistence.org
Thanks, Kpeatt 18:03, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
There was another article in a BC paper, a certain weekly I think, on the boomer/mountain beaver, which was just about it and habitat issues in the Canadian Cascades, which is the northward limit of their range; and in that area they are mountain dwellers (that part of BC is only mountains). If I can find it online somehow (it's over a year ago I saw it so any chance I might have hard copy around the house is nil, esp. since I've been throwing things out this last week...) I'll add it here also. Skookum1 19:28, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
- Should the infobox be using the 2001 ( Image:Status iucn3.1 NT.svg ) status table instead of the older system? Solarbird ( talk) 18:06, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Can someone explain what "protrogomorphous" means in the article? I tried to, but realized I would probably get it wrong and reverted myself. I think it's too technical now. Thanks, Dave (talk) July 5, 2005 16:16 (UTC)
- This might be discussed at Aplodontoidea which would need to be split off anyway (not monotypic and subpages exist: see Mylagaulidae) Dysmorodrepanis ( talk) 04:23, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
I just thought I'd note that I tried hard to capitalise the common names in spite of the fact that it looks ridiculous. -- Aranae 04:14, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
I'm surprised there's no explanation of the "Boomer" name here, namely that they make the damnedest booming sound. There've been recent copy on this in naturalist articles in the Vancouver paper so I'll see what I can dig up, as there were some interesting details. It may also only be the rainierii subspecies, but from what I thought I knew the boomer had been unknown to native local peoples (at least around here) until "discovered" and classified; IIRC the first revelations of this were from the area of Princeton, BC, which is on the dryland side of the Cascade Range near its northern end; the area between there and the town of Hope on the Fraser is one of the main ranges/densities of this population....I think the article had to do with speculations on whether it's endangered or not, because of all the logging in that area, and how little is known about the impact on the boomer because so little is known about them, period. Anyway, I'll see what else I can find. As with a query on Talk:Crotalus oreganus, is there any point in adding BC/OR/WP or any other state/province Wikiproject templates to fauna pages? Skookum1 17:58, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
While the subspecies that live in Canada and California (the furthest North/South extent of the species' range) might be rare, the populations living in Oregon appear to be stable. In Oregon, mountain beaver is not a protected species. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tsarevna ( talk • contribs) 08:49, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
Throughout the article it repeatedly indicates that the mountain beaver is limited to coastal/low altitude areas. Most of the subspecies are, but at least one is found throughout the Cascade and northern Sierra Nevada ranges at least as high as Lake Tahoe (6,229 ft. altitude). It also states that they are completely intolerant of cold macroenvironments; Tahoe receives most of its precipitation in the form of snow, on 2/3 of nights the temperature dips below freezing, and 0 degree F nights typically occur several times a year. There is a lot to do to address these issues while not oversimplifying (as mountain beavers truely are poor thermoregulators, etc.), and I don't know if I will be able to do so soon. If someone can work on it before I do I would greatly appreciate it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Scalasaig ( talk • contribs) 21:11, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
This article states: "Mountain beavers are found in the Cascade Mountains of British Columbia and southward to include the rest of the Cascade Range in the United States, plus the Siskiyous, and the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California." So basically, most of this animals' range in in the United States and it extend a bit into southern British Columbia, so why is this sentence worded with the extreme northern tip of it's range leading off? Did this creature start off up north and migrate to the south? If not, might it not be better worded to reflect how it is distributed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.51.66.32 ( talk) 16:34, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
The proper spelling of the family name is discussed in Helgen (2005; Mammal Species of theWorld Vol. 3). Although the single 'i' spelling is frequently used in many texts, the stem is "Aplodonti-" not "Aplodont-". The suffixes "=idae" for family, "-oidea" for superfamily, etc. are added to the stem and are "Aplodontiidae" and "Aplodontioidea", etc. -- Aranae ( talk) 01:19, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
- Quite true; I corrected the spelling in the article. Incidentally, we'll eventually also need a separate article on the Aplodontiidae, which includes many fossil genera in addition to Aplodontia. Ucucha 01:23, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
What does "primitive" mean in this article (see first sentence)? I thought this was disfavored terminology. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.107.0.84 ( talk) 16:28, 7 July 2010 (UTC) Agreed! What is meant is something like "most similar to ancestral rodents".....not exactly a nice flow there. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.3.3.44 ( talk) 03:34, 29 January 2012 (UTC)