On a river close to Perth, Ont., a group of wildlife photographers quietly tracked their subject on a recent autumn evening.
Using an electric trolling motor for movement, the water remained calm as they floated upstream. Suddenly, a splash echoed like a gunshot when their target’s tail hit the water and the animal submerged.
The legendary white beaver had caught their scent.
Ottawa photographer Dennis Jackson never imagined he would encounter such an unusual creature, even after years of photographing wildlife.
After spotting the white beaver on a boat trip with his neighbor weeks earlier, Jackson was eager to return to the river alongside renowned Canadian naturalist Michael Runtz, his wife Britta Runtz-who is also a professional photographer-and a CBC reporter.
Apart from wishing for another sighting, Jackson wanted to find out: Was this beaver an albino-an unlikely survivor since most albino animals tend to be nearly blind-or leucistic, which causes partial loss of pigmentation?
The white beaver appeared again at dusk, but after sensing humans nearby it was uncertain if it would linger long enough for them to gather more information.
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Ottawa photographer Dennis Jackson, left, and naturalist Michael Runtz were delighted to photograph a rare white beaver on a recent boat trip near Perth, Ont. (Stu Mills/CBC)
As the photographers waited anxiously, the white beaver swam past their boat underwater, its light-colored tail shimmering before it surfaced among some reeds. The creature then climbed onto land to groom itself, exposing a patch of dark fur on its front left paw and clearly dark eyes.
“With true albinism, you can’t produce any dark pigmentation, so the eyes are always pink, so I would say that’s a leucistic beaver,” Runtz concluded.
The recently retired Carleton University professor was thrilled by the sighting.
“To see a totally white beaver with dark eyes and a dark foot, that’s incredible!”
Even better was that they had photographs as proof.
“I’m very happy just seeing it; if I didn’t get any photographs I’d be almost equally as happy. But I must admit I am a little happier that we were successful in getting pictures too,” Runtz said.
Like many wild animals, beavers occasionally have offspring with color mutations; however lighter coats can make them more susceptible to predators.
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The dark eyes and a dark patch of fur on its paw suggests this is a leucistic rather than albino beaver. (Dennis Jackson)
White beavers are rare enough that the Canadian Museum of Nature has in its collection a leucistic beaver pelt collected in Rainy River, Ont., in 1918.
Dominique Fauteux, research scientist at the museum and mammalogy expert says that white beavers’ rarity indicates it’s not been advantageous evolutionarily speaking.
“Over millions of years that kind of mutation hasn’t become very common,” he told CBC. “The pressure for evolution is not very strong to keep that gene in the gene pool.”
For Jackson personally though, the scientific aspect was less important than how special it felt overall.
“That is totally one of the coolest things that I’ve seen,” he declared while steering the boat homeward.
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