Thanks to our roving reporter Lory Bruno who boldly braved the blasting heat and the drenching puns to attend the beaver queen pageant in Durham North Carolina yesterday. You can see there is little service she won’t perform for beavers. I would tell you all about it, but I’m very cheap and they require a fee to read the article. If you’re dying to know who won, look here:
VACUOUS VARMINTS: Ellerbe Creek banks on Beaver Queen camp
Of course they started the day with this golden oldie. I can’t tell whether Lory and her granddaughter are joining in the song, can you?
Meanwhile plenty of beaver stupid remains in the world, even if they know how to throw a party for them in Durham. Let’s start with dear, impaired Minnesota with the disabled fish, shall we? 
For the love of trout
An effort to revive interest in trout fishing as well as the resource itself continues in Borderland.
Staff from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources fisheries staff, with assistance from Julian Malinowski and former state Sen. Bob Lessard, stocked 700 brook trout in the Lost River, north of Orr, May 24. The fish came from a hatchery in Iron River, Wis., and are a bit smaller than the fish normally stocked.
Broznowski said the trees planted are white spruce, which will offer shelter and shade for the river and trout. The trout require cool water, which can be created by the shade. And, he noted, beaver do not favor white spruce, so the new trees won’t end up damming the river.
Broznowski said beaver control at the river will be needed forever. Without that control, beavers will again dam the river and flood the area, causing the water to warm and, as a result, the trout to die.
Ahh, I guess the words ‘hyporheic exchange’ mean nothing to you, do they? Maybe all the creek channels are concrete so it doesn’t matter anyway? It’s nice to know in this topsy turvy world were things are true one day and false the next, there are still some things you can count on. Like beaver ignorance in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
And beaver exaggeration by politicians.
Beavers cause €750K worth of damages in Austrian town
But the beaver programme had not been without its difficulties as the protected animals can come into conflict with farmers by damaging their fields or with local authorities by obstructing water flows.
The problem became so bad the government even set up a “beaver management” programme last year to mediate between those affected and the conservation authorities.
Since it started in April 2015 the beaver “managers” have resolved 35 conflicts in 29 municipalities in the country.
The mayor of the small town of Zurndorf in Burgenland Werner Friedl says, however, that there has been no solution so far to the beaver problems in his town, which he says have caused damage to the tune of €750,000 by interfering with flood controls and water flows.
“The beavers have a paradise here. There are 200 animals for sure,” he said in an interview with the Kurier newspaper.
Friedl added that he is not hostile to beavers and does not support the idea of a cull but hopes that the conservation department “wakes up from their winter sleep”.
The small town of Zurndorf, which has the misfortune of sounding like a Marx brothers insult, is about 21 square miles and boasts a population of 2500. Near as I can tell its major area for beaver is the Leitha river at its east border. The river feeds the Danube and is the site of a famous battle in 1246 between Austria and Hungary. Now do I think this river has a population of 200 beavers? Not a chance. Do I think the mayor of this town is trying to weasel funds for roads or infrastructure by blaming beavers? Very likely.
Well, before we despair on our European cousins entirely, here’s a lovely image from our good friend Peter Smith in Kent. He was inspired by the witty Welsh vanadlism that is currently sweeping the nation by storm. Can we get a fleet of these please?
