Ms. Walmsley's Barrett Street Marsh Project

Our class started learning about beavers with Ms. Katie from the Hitchcock Center in the fall of 2021. Then, we went on a field trip to the Barrett Street Marsh later that fall. We saw trees that were cut down by beavers and a beaver dam but we thought they looked old. We wanted to know if there were beavers living at the marsh. We asked Laurie Sanders from Historic Northampton if she could put cameras at the marsh to help us answer the question. When we watched all the videos there were NO beavers. But, we saw muskrats, ducks, frogs, owls, deer, two kinds of foxes, bluejays, chipmunks, squirrels, chickadees and a black bear!!!! You can see some of those videos here:

Mammals at the Marsh

Barrett Street Birds

Deer, a Blue Jay, and More in Barrett Street Marsh

After watching the videos, we went back to the marsh in the spring of 2022. We looked again for evidence that beavers are living at the marsh right now but only found the old chewed trees and overgrown beaver dam we had seen in the spring. We did research by reading old articles from the Daily Hampshire Gazette and tried to figure out what happened. We wrote to the DPW and asked them questions, too! We have figured out what happened to the beavers and we want to share it with you!