Mandeville is 38 miles away from New Orleans and can’t you just tell already you’re going to love this story? Seems some beavers have taken up residence in the swamp near Hidden Acres neighborhood. And the residents are divided about whether they should keep them around or send them packing. Mandeville is on the other side of lake Ponchartrain (the real culprit of Katrina) and as it happens, about 30 minutes from where my mother grew up and where my great grandmother settled after coming over from Germany to start a general store. There are clearly many folk in Mandeville who know that beavers are Worth A Dam. I wonder if maybe saving beavers is genetic?
“It’s really divided the neighborhood,” said Webb Williams, who lives in the Hidden Acres neighborhood at the end of Penn’s Chapel Road.
The beavers-must-go camp wants them trapped and moved to another area, where they won’t bump into people or possibly cause flooding problems. The let-’em-stay camp wonders what’s the big deal? After all, they reason, beavers were in St. Tammany Parish long before subdivisions arrived.
Anyone else have a wave of deja-vu? This story could be from the sf chronicle about Martinez! Apparently folks in Mandeville have enjoyed having beavers in the area, liked watching their dam change every morning. One grandmother stayed up with her 3 year old to watch them. Others are arguing over the back fence. Of course there are the usual concerns. Flooding. Trees. Population.
But this one made me laugh out loud.
“that the swamp will become a particularly rich breeding ground for mosquitoes.”
Oh no! Don’t tell me the SWAMP will get mosquitoes! That never happens! It was probably such a nice swamp before!
This is as good a time as any to repeat what experts have to say on the subject.
This of course leads to natural questions about mosquito larvae, which are known to accumulate in still pools. However, beaver ponds have been shown to actually reduce mosquito population. There are nearly 3000 known species of mosquito but beaver ponds tend to shift composition of larvae – making conditions less desirable for some and ideal for others. All mosquitoes are not created equal, some are much more damaging to human populations. For example, one of the species most associated with West Nile Virus and yellow-fever (Aedes) cannot survive in the permanent water of a beaver pond.
Butts, W.L. 1992. Changes in local mosquito fauna following beaver (castor canadensis) activity—an update: journal of American Mosquito Control Association 8(3):331-332.
At the moment, the ‘I bear no ill will crowd’ is busily defending its compassion creds by asking that beavers be MOVED and not trapped. This is an inevitable stage of kubler-rossian beaver denial where the problem is wished far away with absolutely no thought as to how it will happen or whether or not it will result in eventual death anyway. You saw it happen here in the early stages.
“I think we’d like to see them trapped and moved — sort of like a beaver relocation program,” he added, only somewhat tongue in cheek. It remains a bit unclear how feasible it would be to trap and move the beavers, or what the parish government could do about them.
Ah yes. No idea how many beavers there are. No thought to what device should be used to trap them without harming them. No thought to how important it is to keep family units together or possible sites for successful relocation. Just “Don’t blame ME I don’t want them dead, just gone!”
Well, I’m very proud of the folks of Mandeville and our friends at the Times-Picayune. Worth A Dam would be happy to give advice and information and offer solutions for living with your swampy neighbors.And in the mean time, I’m just going to appreciate your artwork, and thank you for making my morning with “Jesus loves beavers”.
