Poachers!
Beaver website poachers! They’re all around us. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t see some item from this website used without permission OR get some more slightly more responsible human asking me to use an image. A photograph. A poster. Our entire library. It’s all for the good of the beavers, and you want to help beavers right?
Two weeks ago I was approached by the Beaver Trust in England asking about our beaver as ecosystem poster. They wanted to set up a zoom chat to ask me about out work and its origins. Silly me, I thought they wanted to know about our community efforts. But they really only wanted the poster. It was such a smart design. Could they use it? Could their artists recreate the shape and animals for their country? Would they need to pay me royalties?
hahaha.
Just take it I said not entirely unresentfully. I’ll be happy to see it drawn with British wildlife. And this morning Mike Callahan wrote that they are trying to make the “Beaver Institute Website the premiere online library in the world” so can they please have ours? Oh sure, Take what you like I said feeling like a food bank on Christmas eve. Why should I horde beaver information anyway? We all want it shared freely with everyone. Share share, That’s fair, right?
And the thing that bugs me most is that both those names, the beaver trust and the beaver institute have bigger profiles and more respect that this rinky little operation will ever get, It’s like robbing the local pastor to pay the Vatican. But go ahead. I’m sure I’ll one day be lost in the annals of beaver history but I will have contributed. It says so right in Ben Goldfarb’s book.
And that’s something.
Meanwhile there’s good news from Carolina so I should stop complaining.
Living with Beavers
Beavers build dams to raise the water level until deep enough for swimming. They build lodges out of sticks and mud for their homes, unless they are residing in deep rivers or lakes where they dig and live in burrows in a high bank with an underwater exit for safe getaways.
“Beavers are truly nature’s engineers and, like people, will manipulate their habitat according to their needs.”
“Beavers are truly nature’s engineers and, like people, will manipulate their habitat according to their needs,” says Colleen Olfenbuttel, state black bear and furbearer biologist with the NC Wildlife Resources Commission. “The habitats they create can be both beneficial and cause conflicts.”
Beaver dams can produce flooding in unwanted places and result in millions of dollars in property and agricultural damage in North Carolina without management, Colleen explains. But their ponds can be an asset for both people and wildlife. They create new habitat for many other species, and the flooding creates wetlands and can recharge groundwater. The pond becomes home to fish, waterfowl, raptors, reptiles, mammals, native plants, and insects. The wetlands created by beavers help clean the water of sediments and control erosion. People can find abundant recreational opportunities around beaver ponds, such as hunting, canoeing and fishing.
Gosh, Well WE know its true obviously. But I didn’t know NC Wildlife Resource Commission knew it was true. That’s nice to hear from your side of the country. Tell me more.
Ask folks who have had beavers for neighbors, and you’ll get mixed reactions. Some enjoy watching them and appreciate the ecosystems created by their dams and ponds.
“We have a little off-channel pond someone built on our property before we bought it. Their little dam made the pond a bit deeper, and it was fun watching them,” says Kim Beall of Franklin County, who enjoyed watching her beaver neighbors.
John Hilpert, also in Franklin County, says beavers built several dams across Tooles Creek at one point. “If quiet, we’d enjoy watching them play. So, they cut some minor trees like sweet gum — the increase in wildlife and flood control was an excellent tradeoff.”
Others, however, are not so happy with their beaver neighbors. The Foushees in Person County had their beavers removed by licensed trappers because of the flooding they caused. Judy Spruill of Washington County also had a colony of beavers removed from her farm because of flooding.
Well sure, You can tell how good people are at solving problems by how they get on with beavers. If they’re thick and slow like a bag of hammers everything looks like a nail. And the beavers will be killed right away. If they are resilient, resourceful and creative like Martinez however, something else happens entirely.
The second solution is learning to live with beavers and taking advantage of the benefits of a beaver-created wetland or pond. The NC Wildlife Resources Commission has a number of science-based options for resolving beaver damage while still maintaining beavers on your property. Some options include fencing off the area with trees you want preserved or putting wire mesh around individual trees — though not too tightly, or the beaver can still chew on the bark. Control flooding with water level control devices, typically made from drainage pipes. Designs for these water control devices can be found on the NC Wildlife website.
“Thankfully, we can have the benefits of beavers on the landscape, while also having methods to resolve conflicts when they occur,” Colleen says, “which is a good balance for North Carolina.”
Ahh we have the solutions alright, Just not enough people who would rather solve a problem than kill it.
