The Waning Reign of the Muskrat

I live on tens of acres of wetlands. Two 1/4acre ponds, front is a marsh.

The muskrat damage constructed pond shores, but what they create is a low maybe 1 foot deep shoulder where their holes erode dirt onto the pond slope, which is excellent for wildlife. Its the area herons stalk for prey and fish breed. In my case my ponds are very secure with mud banks, so not being worried about leaks I decided to leave the muskrat. They are very cute. That was a few years back.

One spring I found 3-4 bodies washed up, possibly from Tularemia. More moved back in, and the spring we went from 2 to 6 individuals, and all the plants started to disappear. The reading I did said muskrat are very much a meta-population like the article mentions. In absence of predators, they will eat a place bare until it can no longer feed them and then migrate.

Close to the house I've now adopted a slow reduction with a rifle (non-lead rounds) to offset my imbalance of protecting them from predators. The pond shore damage hasn't stopped so they're still there but it has slowed enough to have time to get out with a wheelbarrow and fix the holes. Plants are doing fine.

In a similar balance I shot a pair of extremely large snapping turtles two years ago after learning large snappers have no predators, and we now have a new population of tiny turtles (~4 different species so far). I'm never happy to kill anything, but hopefully in these two cases I'm performing my steward role adequately.

My son was required to do a report on muskrats for school recently, and both him and I knew nothing about them, and were shocked by how little info their is- trying to find basic info about them online is really hard, they are certainly pretty much ignored by people. Ultimately, we were able to find reported sightings in iNaturalist, and were able to find them in the wild, active at dusk. It was a magical experience for both of us.

Sad. These guys are really cute. They’ll invite themselves to live in beaver dams and make for a vaguely tolerated roommate that helps patch up walls and stuff. They’re not as good at the big picture stuff as beavers.

The author, Brandon Keim, is a favorite of mine. If you like this piece, his book Eye of the Sandpiper is worth checking out.

https://brandonkeim.net/sandpiper

In a museum in Canada I noticed a grammar book of the Eskimo language, which is agglutinative. The examples illustrating what this meant started with the word for "muskrat", and got progressively more complex, finally ending with the word (yes, word) for "he will never hunt muskrat the same way again", which sounded to me like the beginning of a beautiful fireside legend.

Grew up in the Dutch countryside with it's polders, water mills, dykes and extensive network of water. Muskrats thrive in this sort of area, but are rather not welcome as unmanaged they'd pose a thread to life with their tunnelling of watersides and dykes. When I was a kid my dad used to work for the government department responsible for curbing the population of muskrat - known as "muskrat-catchers". Joined him occasionally on his treks through the countryside to check all the traps and cages so this brings up some childhood memories. Surprising topic to come across on HN!

We have a regular muskrat visitor at our pond in Michigan every March, I haven't worked out where it goes the rest of the year

Nice animal in US, but a cute pest in Europe. Biologists must keep killing them to avoid their expansion to new areas. Was removed from UK but is not so easy in the continental areas.

The local populations can be decimated by diseases like Tularemia. Foxes also kill a lot.

We see muskrats swimming along our shoreline at least once a week. They're very skittish and once you spook them into the water, they don't pop back up within visible range. I think they're relatively uncommon around here due to most properties installing anti-erosion structures along their shorelines--a seawall or riprap with metal mesh. Also, we still have a healthy amount of predators, eagles, hawks, foxes, raccoons, pollutants and speeding cars.

Sad to see the clear decline in muskrat numbers.

Interesting that there is no mention of the invasive nutria perhaps outcompeting them especially in brackish waters.

Anecdotally we used to see them all the time around here (Vancouver, BC area) in ponds and sloughs but I haven't seen one in a while.

Read this too quickly and thought I would be finding out the details of rifling, breech loading, etc.

I thought this was about Elon Musk for a second

That shade!

I thought this was about the other Muskrat

My friends call Elon Musk, Muskrat. I thought this was a chronicle about the decline of Tesla.