Beavers: The good, the bad and the ugly
Katie Wilson
“They’re very industrious and build wonderful things” said Wayne Hoffman, MidCoast Watersheds Council coordinator, in a presentation, “Beavers: Engineering Healthy Watersheds” at the Seaside Public Library Wednesday night. The Necanicum Watershed Council, with the North Coast Land Conservancy, a land trust that owns properties from the Columbia River Estuary to Lincoln City, hosted Hoffman as a part of the “Listening to the Land” series. Humans and beavers can coexist, maintain Hoffman and the NCLC. It just sometimes takes creative solutions.
This article was passed on the AP with various headlines suggesting a delightful beaver-affirming read, but it starts out more like the compliment from a very difficult grandmother: you have to scour through the insults and read between the lines to find the good stuff.
” It’s easy to see they’re rodents.” Some beavers are just not master architect material, and he’s witnessed beaver activity that’s made him shake his head. “I haven’t had a lot of success in understanding the minds of beavers,” he said. These large rodents can be big pests, making water flow where it shouldn’t (onto roads, across property) and gnawing on valuable trees.
I’m not sure why one’s own failure to understand something makes that thing inscrutable…(it’s not like our doctors get away with saying, I have no idea why you feel sick, that’s weird!”) But I’ll give Wayne the benefit of the doubt because Len says he knows him and he’s a good guy and a beaver believer. Of course I promptly wrote to invite him to the State of the Beaver Conference but apparently the River Restoration Conference is at the same time.
They’ve agreed for the future to pick different dates so as not to force folks to choose (would you rather save beavers or creeks?). Looking at some of the negative messages my guess is that Wayne (or the author) is just doing that thing where you pretend to dislike something that’s unpopular so that you can win more trust from the crowd when you later tell them its a good idea. (What a cynical friend would call the “Obama hippie-punch that sometimes precedes bad news for the GOP.’)
So after he talks a bit of smack about beavers he gets to the good stuff.
Humans and beavers can coexist, maintain Hoffman and the NCLC. It just sometimes takes creative solutions. If a culvert is consistently getting clogged because of beaver activities, a bigger culvert or a bridge can be installed. There are ways to fund these projects if a landowner can’t personally afford to do it, said Hoffman and Celeste Coulter, stewardship director for NCLC. The NCLC, as a nonprofit, has access to all sorts of grants, Coulter said. “We’re always willing to work with landowners,” she said.
Well that’s better. No mention of beaver deceivers’/trapazoidal culvert fencing but its a good start. Len tells me that Celeste is a member of the beaver advocacy co mmittee and will be at the conference in February. That’s promising.
“Beavers can be pests,” Hoffman admitted, but having them around can provide both an ecological and a public benefit. “In my opinion, it’s worth the investment,” he said. Beavers encourage other plant and animal life in and around the ponds they make when they dam streams; they can change the hydrology of stream systems across land in positive ways; and, more importantly for this region, they create excellent salmon habitat good news for conservationists and fishers alike, Hoffman said.
Impressive. We’re only on the second page of the article before we actually get to the point. I’m inclined to blame Ms. Wilson, but who knows what happened to the story she originally wrote? Wayne, though, is a little cautious for my beaver-bold tastes. How about rather than “In my opinion” you say “The research shows us again and again that it’s worth the investment.” Hmm, maybe its not a very scientific-minded crowd. Then how about “I’ve seen countless landowners come to realize that its worth the investment”?
The dams create calm pond areas where juvenile salmon can feed and grow large and strong. These fish have a better chance of later surviving in the ocean. But beaver populations have been on the decline. There had been anecdotal information coming in for years: landowners who said, “Well, we used to have beavers, but we haven’t seen them for a while.” There were old dams that hadn’t been tended in a long time and evidence of places where ponds used to be. In 2006 and 2007, a series of studies Hoffman took part in, showed a decline in dams across the region. Between 1992 and 1997, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Aquatic Habitat Inventory recorded 71 dams in one area. However, in 2007, “We walked the same dams and found three,” Hoffman said. The story was similar almost everywhere they went, at the Tillamook Basin, at the Upper Five Rivers and at the Yaquina Basin.
A landscape without as many beavers, Hoffman said, is a landscape that’s not as good for fish and other ecosystems. When beavers build dams, they help distribute nutrients up and down water systems. Take away the dam, and nutrients tend to collect farther away from the headwaters, leaving the headwaters thin on nutrients while other places are glutted.
Not enough beavers! There’s the real story! The headline of KATU got it right. Talk about ‘burying your lead’! This is what the article SHOULD be about. Numbers dropped drastically? Gosh I can’t help but wonder if it had anything to do with ORS 610.002 which moved beavers to the “Predator status” so that they could be lethally hunted on private lands without any permit or cumbersome counting.
The funny thing is that beavers on public land are classified as a protected fur-bearer. Are there signs posts? I sure hope Oregon’s beavers can tell the difference. The article meanders through a host of possible explanations without mentioning the status issue, possibly blaming cougars or reed-canary grass. (It’s always good to blame the loss of one species on the encroachment of another provided that the encroaching species isn’t human). And then Wayne offers some possible solutions:
What’s the solution? Hoffman isn’t sure. He has some ideas, though: reduce trapping, make habitats safer for beavers, restore food supplies, get rid of Reed canary grass, and reduce the beaver-human conflicts by replacing small culverts with bigger ones. Maybe even provide compensation for landowners who are willing to let beavers stay on the land.
I like that last one the best. It’s easy enough to provide a property tax reduction for landowners who can demonstrate active colonies on site. I still like the idea of a salmon tax where you charge people to get RID of beavers and the funds go into watershed restoration and beaver management. Still, none of these ideas is possible until Oregon takes the dreaded step and withdraws beavers from 610.002. As long as private landowners can do what they please to colonies with no report and no paperwork you have no way to control the trapping that occurs.
Maybe its time to classify beaver as something OTHER than a predator?
