The city of Salisbury Maryland is shocked to learn that a beaver will chew a tree to survive in the winter. Shocked I tell you! They are furthermore shocked to learn that a beaver, who has built a lodge, and chewed many trees, is probably not acting alone but with family members, possibly many family members. They are stunned to learn that Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources has said they cannot livetrap the beaver and dump it in someone else’s creek instead.
They’ve even floated the idea of taking it to the local zoo.
Gone is the wait-and-see approach adopted by city officials when the beaver showed up. All options are on the table, Mayor Jim Ireton said, emphasizing that the absolute last among them is euthanizing the creatures. “Nobody wants to kill a beaver,” he said, “and nobody wants a tree to fall down.”
It could join its brethren at the Salisbury Zoo, some have suggested. But that would entail testing it for rabies first and making sure the existing beaver habitat could support a third animal, Ireton said.
Isn’t Maryland supposed to be one of our founding fathers or something? Wasn’t it like the 7th state to ratify the constitution and hugely important in the beaver trade? And wasn’t Maryland ranked as the 5th greenest state in the nation a few years back by Forbes magazine? What on earth is wrong with them?
Mayor Jim Ireton said. “Nobody wants to kill a beaver,” he said, “and nobody wants a tree to fall down.”
And those are your two choices? Death of beavers or death of trees? Do you also make your residents pick between getting wet when they walk outside in May and having a drought? Between sitting by the fire and bursting into flames? Between having electricity in homes and letting crawling infants stick their fingers in power outlets? You do know there are actual ‘solutions’ for these problems right? Including protecting trees from beavers?
For its part, the Humane Society of the United States recommends a handful of ways to keep beavers at bay, including fencing off the trees or wrapping the lower 3 feet of the trunk in galvanized wire. “Some success” has been seen with coating the lower trunk in a mixture of exterior latex paint and coarse mason’s sand, according to its website.
What’s up with “some success” HSUS? Could you be a little more specific? Like, it has to be reapplied every two years and it doesn’t work at all if you do it wrong? (I’m thinking they get a letter.) For the record, its worked in Martinez. And it works for about two years at a time.
A park visitor said last week that he too knew at once that the fallen trees were the work of a beaver. But Adrion Parks, who lives in Princess Anne, said he doesn’t think the animal should have to pay with its life.
“He’s just doing what he knows how to do,” said Parks, 18.
FYI Salisbury. Beavers don’t chew trees because its a bad habit they picked up like smoking or biting their fingernails. They don’t chew trees because they got in with the wrong crowd or weren’t taught right by their parents. They chew trees because they are herbivores and they need to EAT and wear down their constantly growing teeth. So solving this problem now, learning how to manage beaver chewing, since beavers will always be getting ready for the winter freeze about this time and trying to take a bunch of trees into their food cache about now, spending 5 minutes to learn what to do and investing 10 dollars from the hardy city funds is probably a good use of your time.
Any city smarter than a beaver can keep a beaver. And keep a beaver from eating its trees.
I can’t find the museum where this lovely diaorama is displayed, but if that’s a living breathing pair of mismatched beavers I will kiss a goat. I helpfully wrote the poster that they would find photos of real beavers on our website and were welcome to share them and the poster wrote back saying she had no reason to think these weren’t real beavers, as she found the story on the BBC.
