This Christmas Eve the Daily Iberian in Louisiana published another head-scratching WTF article. In it we learn that in addition to being considered a ‘nuisance animal’ by the State Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, beavers are ‘not native‘ to the region and have ‘no natural predators’!
Big, bad beavers are wreaking havoc on drainage channels in Iberia Parish, said Public Works Director Kevin Hagerich. Not indigenous to the area, beavers have started appearing here in the past several years, Hagerich said. “It seems to be getting worse every spring,” said Public Works Supervisor Herman Broussard. “They don’t have too many natural predators down here.”
Lets take those points one at a time, shall we? Beavers aren’t native in Louisiana? Umm…what do you think all those French people were doing there in the 1700’s? and 1800’s? They came down from Quebec looking for something. I wonder what it might have been?
The French in Canada, relying less and less on Indians to serve as middlemen, spread rapidly into the interior of the country, where fur-bearing animals were plentiful. Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet, a fur trader, reached the Mississippi River in 1673. The Sieur de La Salle followed them a few years later, in 1682 reaching the mouth of the river and claiming the entire Mississippi Valley for France. La Salle planned to found a colony in Louisiana, as he had named the region, to control river traffic and keep a monopoly for France on the fur trade there. His plans were carried out after his death, and New Orleans was founded in 1718, cutting off the British from use of the Lower Mississippi. Fur Trade
So the French came down the middle and the English came down the coast across and the Dutch came across the Hudson and Louisiana itself wouldn’t have been worth fighting over if it wasn’t for beavers. It was a big greedy free-for-all where destruction of several native peoples was just an incidental bonus in the pursuit of wealth. I’m going to go out on a limb here, boys and say if the entire economy of New Orleans was based on the beaver fur-felt hat industry circa 1750 then we can assume that beavers were native to the area.
Let’s move on to the pesky predator issue. Last time I checked the state still had a whole mess of these:
Turns out they live the same place beavers do! They have a pair of the most powerful jaws on the continent! And they eat meat! They can even hold their breath a whole lot longer than a beaver, which has zero defenses against them! Whew, that must be a relief.
Now as for beavers being a ‘nuisance species’, I really can’t argue with that. They can create a ‘nuisance’. Small, narrow minds focused on short term solutions can find them an awful nuisance. They build dams and chew trees and generally change things. I bet a smart parish like Iberia, however, could be smarter than an actual beaver. You could install flow devices, protect culverts and wrap trees. Then your ‘nuisance species’ could improve your water quality, increase your fish populations, raise bird count and provide essential wetlands for wildlife and a much needed buffer for your coastline. It would be like an investment. Sometimes a ‘nuisance’ pays off.
Just one more thing. Since you seem kinda confused about history, you do know what your state was named after right?
