Once upon a time, not too long ago but very far away, there was a prestigiously  educated state on the east coast that was so smart it even put beavers on the class rings of its  university. Because the collective IQ of the state was fairly lofty and the populace fairly liberal,  it decided it didn’t want to use icky leg-hold traps anymore. So  around the time that Clinton was president and the Macarena was popular they passed a law to this effect.

It didn’t take very long before the panic started. “No traps!” they exclaimed in horror. “We will be overrun by wildlife. We will be surrounded by coyotes and drowned by beavers.” But the will of the voters had spoken and the legislators had to do what they said. The state with beaver class rings passed a law saying it wasn’t going to use leg-hold traps or conibears to kill  anymore.

(Unless one of 9 conditions were met and everyone knows that they can almost always be construed to be met but that’s a post for another day.)

The fact is that smart watershed-interested folk around the bay state started to get panicked at this news. The beaver population was exploding. There were going to be too many beavers. Even folks who thought the occasional beavers in moderation were good for the planet, started to get panicked about the massive numbers that were predicted.

Flash forward 20 years, when that exploding beaver population all had kits and exploded some more. An educated man writes me to say that the beaver population has returned to the numbers it had before the fur trade.  He cites the number of beaver dams in a particular area and assumes a surprising number of beavers per dam which means that by his estimate the population is enormous.

Which is why I reposted this lovely illustration from the 1868 writings of Lewis Morgan “The American beaver his life and works” The illustration shows a series of beaver dams in a gorge. 7 to be precise. That’s 7 dams tended by a single colony of beavers. Which means you can’t infer populations directly from the number of dams built. Beyond this research has reported again and again that any colony rarely gets any bigger than 9 and the numbers are usually less. (Our largest colony in 6 years of observation, with parents, yearlings and kits was 8 at one time.)

This means that if you multiply the number of dams counted by any surprising number you will be grossly overestimating the population of beavers. And alarming the populace with your inflated statistics. And killing more than you need to do.

But, you may ask, if people have been watching these beavers all this time and it SEEMS like more isn’t that proof?

In answer to this question I will direct you to something I wrote on this website what seems like a million years ago now but was actually only June 2008.

The kindest interpretation of this is that people see things in a new way when they are alarmed. There are several less charitable explanations. An example: At my old office I had birdfeeders and a number of feathered visitors. Goldfinches, white and red breasted nuthatches, and downy woodpeckers to name a few. My downstairs neighbor complained about seed husks so we would sweep his porch every week to keep it tidy. During one such sweeping event, the crabby old accountant watched with folded arms and said, “What about all the green stuff. Get that too.”

The “green stuff” in question was pollen from the hundreds of pines in the area and had been on his porch every spring for as long as he had been there, but of course he had never seen it before because he had never looked with this particular set of eyes.

And those, as it happens, are the very same eyes that this state looks at beaver with.

Here endeth the lesson.

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Nice photos from Cheryl last night, who briefly saw one kit and three adults. Here’s mom inspecting the credentials of her photographer.

And what I think is her best photo of a green heron yet.