The good news about beaver and salmonids has pretty much reached everywhere except for parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin. Take a listen to this report from Minnesota. It discusses their no tolerance policy and some crazy new research.

New research? Try 20 years old research.

Leave It To Beavers?

“Kill them all,” Croke remembers them saying.

They were killing beavers to help fish, particularly steelhead trout. And they’re still doing it today. But some people are not on board with that. Today’s episode is all about that conflict, and about how our scientific understanding of the role of beavers may be changing.

And, of course, they say they’re bad for trout.

But new research shows it could be the exact opposite – that beavers might not be so bad for trout after all.

In 2018 and 2019, scientists at the University of Minnesota Duluth studied dams on a couple of rivers in the state, including the Knife. And, in those spots, they found that, during their study, dams didn’t necessarily block fish from migrating up and down the river.

Professor Karen Gran led the research team.

KAREN GRAN: So as long as water was able to get over the top of the dam at some point during that time period, the fish were able to move over the dam.

Please could someone explain to me why on God’s Green Earth beavers would be bad news for trout near the great lakes but good news for trout in every other place? And how trout used to survive before people were on hand to kill all the beavers? Or how hyporheic exchange means beaver ponds cool water for trout?

But never mind. These questions mean nothing in Minnesota. I guess we should be grateful they are starting to ask them at all.

Let’s comfort ourselves with more awesome photos from Rusty Cohn’s visit to the North pond in Napa last night. Them’s are the ridingest beavers I’ve ever beheld. Lucky for us. Not so lucky for that crayfish I guess.