Gr8 River Road: Beaver Spotting Mystery Cache
zuma!: bye bye--I like this spot a lot and hope someone else puts a cache here. but if not, I eventually will.
Gr8 River Road: Beaver Spotting
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This could be just a nice walk in Merrick State Park, to a cache in
the backwaters. But when I noticed all of the beaver activity in
the area, I thought it would be fun to make it a mystery cache
about beavers. The cache is at the posted coords.
To log the cache, please go to the cache location and sign the log,
and when you log your find here, please post a photo of either a
beaver, a beaver lodge, or a tree that has been eaten into by a
beaver.
If you take the wooden steps to this location, and look to the
north, you should see a large beaver lodge along the river. There
are also many trees near here with beaver marks, both recent and
old. Your photo can be taken here, or anywhere along the Great
River Road.
Beavers can and do dramatically change the landscape. The beaver
is a keystone species—their skills as foresters and engineers
create and maintain ponds and wetlands that increase biodiversity,
purify water, and prevent large-scale flooding. Biologists have
long studied their daily and seasonal routines, family structures,
and dispersal patterns. As human development encroaches into
formerly wild areas, property owners and government authorities
need new, nonlethal strategies for dealing with so-called nuisance
beavers. At the same time, the complex behavior of beavers
intrigues visitors at parks and other wildlife viewing sites
because it is relatively easy to observe.
Just as individual beavers shape their immediate surroundings, so
did the distribution of beavers across North America influence the
paths of English and French explorers and traders. As a result of
the fur trade, beavers were wiped out across large areas of the
United States. Reintroduction efforts led to the widespread
establishment of these resilient animals, and now they are found
throughout North America.
In 1600, beaver ponds covered eleven percent of the upper
Mississippi and Missouri Rivers’ watershed above Thebes, Illinois.
The beaver hat made the pelt valuable, and as a result, beavers
nearly became extinct. Now, the beaver is once again plentiful.
The Geocache Notification Form has been submitted to Merrick State
Park of the Wisconsin DNR. Geocaches placed on Wisconsin Department
of Natural Resource managed lands require permission by means of a
notification form. Please print out a paper copy of the
notification form, fill in all required information, then submit it
to the land manager. The DNR Notification form and land manager
information can be obtained at:
http://www.wi-geocaching.com/hiding
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Ab ornire znexf ba guvf ubyybj ybt.
Treasures
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