Gov. Maura Healey issued a permit on Thursday for Nibi to become an educational animal.
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If you've seen the video that made Nibi the beaver famous, you're not alone. The governor of Massachusetts has, too, along with some 10 million other people.
And it turns out that video, in which a young Nibi builds a dam at Chelmsford's Newhouse Wildlife Rescue to keep a roommate from returning, is part of the reason Gov. Maura Healey is allowing the beaver to stay at the wildlife rescue, rather than being forced to live in the unfamiliar wild.
"We've all had those roommates," Healey joked Friday, when she got a chance to meet the beaver.
And she explained that Nibi's lack of socialization with other beavers — she's an orphan who was brought to the wildlife rescue very young — is why she issued a permit on Thursday for Nibi to become an educational animal, and not have to be released back into the woods, which MassWildlife had initially ordered last month.
That order sparked outcry, including an online petition to let Nibi stay at the wildlife center, then media coverage. Local politicians intervened, getting the ear of the governor, who got to meet the cause of all the commotion on Friday.
"There was no way that Nibi would survive out there," Healey said.
Not that the 2-year-old beaver was star-struck. She just carried on being a beaver, which is what she'll get to keep doing in Chelmsford.
Jane Newhouse, who founded the wildlife rescue, noted that the point of keeping Nibi isn't to keep her as a pet, but to keep her alive, since her attempts at re-wilding the animal didn't work.
"The goal here is to take what happened with Nibi and try to educate as many people as we can to fall in love with beavers and learn how to live with beavers," she said next to Healey.
