Let beavers in: Garfield would benefit from plan
Garfield County commissioners are suspicious of environmentalists. They seem to believe that people who are on the side of ecosystems — forests, endangered species, wildlife, fragile deserts — are the natural enemies of ranchers and other rural interests. And it’s that suspicion that led the commissioners to refuse the efforts of the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources to restore beavers to historical beaver habitat in the mountainous areas of the county.
That’s unfortunate, since beavers are, as one DWR official described them, “great riparian managers.” The industrious animals build dams, create ponds and lively meadows. They improve wildlife habitat and, at the same time, increase the watershed’s capacity to retain runoff and release the overflow when streams are high in the spring and humans downstream need it most.
The pressure builds in Garfield County Utah, home to the first ever beaver festival in the state next month, and self-declared ‘no-beavers’ capital. You may remember that the county commissioners voted to ‘opt out’ of the beaver reintroduction plan presented them by the department of wildlife resources and our friends at the Grand Canyon Trust. You may further remember that this bold decision came no more than ten days after Garfield was added to the natural disaster list by USDA due to drought conditions. I wrote my usual WTF article and wrote letters which lead to my being asked by the paper to make my letter a little ‘nicer’ so that it wouldn’t create such a defensive response. I encouraged them to do whatever they wanted to make the letter fit to print but advised that in my experience information doesn’t actually change politicians minds: but public pressure can change actions.
Well this article is obviously the ‘kinder’ approach, so we’ll see what transpires. It frames the refusal to participate as a reaction to the scary ‘environment-istas’ that would use their beaver inch to press for a beaver mile, or something like that. Not exactly sure where ranchers are supposed to graze their stock without an ‘environment’ or why the two sides wouldn’t have water and things to graze in common, but its a start!
The DWS manages them, sometimes moving them from place to place on public land, both for the animals’ own welfare and to improve forests and the habitat of other wildlife. The agency has moved a dozen from other parts of the state to Garfield, Kane and Washington counties and would like to bring in 9,000 more. The commissioners of Garfield County should get involved in talks about the beaver reintroduction. If they better understood the plan, they would quit seeing it as a conspiracy aimed at them.
Nice job. Just so you know, I’m conspiring against them. Does that count?
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Now look what our artist FROgard Butler dropped off on my front porch yesterday! The 8 foot beaver painted by children at this year’s festival! She painstakingly turned all their artwork into an unbelievably beautiful mural, keeping all their stories and designs, including the dragon on a surf board blowing flames and the argyle tail children requested after following the bagpiper! I just love how ‘the river runs through it’ and I cannot imagine a Worth A Dam without her amazing creativity and patience.
