Hot Off The Presses

Our own Skip Lisle sends this recent article on the anxiety provoking issue of beaver digging. His central argument focuses on the demonstrable fact that beavers don’t actually waste their time or energy. Rather than riddling a bank with holes, they dig according to the most economic, practical concerns. He emphasizes sense over sensationalism, and outlines the best way to mitigate this behavior. (Hint: the answer doesn’t involve sheetpile) Go read the article, but maybe this will whet your whistle:

Largely instinct-driven, beaver behavior is usually efficient and logical, and rarely counter-productive. Digging in banks is not done randomly or compulsively, but to make tunnels and dens as protection from predators and the elements. Although this activity can pose a serious threat to property, the danger is often exaggerated. Perhaps, because these burrows are underground and invisible, it is easy for one’s imagination to conjure up a subterranean world riddled like Swiss cheese. In reality, tunnels and burrows are not dense, deep, complex, or interconnected systems. They are usually isolated from one another, simple, and shallow.

I would put the entire pithy treatise on the blog for you to read, but Skip has asked me to reference only the PDF so that he can keep minimal control of his writing. Go read it all the way through. It is short and concise, tells it like it is, and in my books deserves very high praise since it references the much bandied-about-term “swiss cheese” without being at all sarcastic.