Indiana had a story that got my attention this week, and no, it wasn’t about Mayor Pete.

Seems some beavers are going to be killed in swamp nature preserve because they’re making things too swampy. The preserve features the increasingly rare Overcup Oak, also known as the swamp oak and the water oak which is known to thrive in swampy conditions but who’s seedlings need sunlight and dry ground to start out.

The overcup Oak is so named because its cap almost entirely cover its acorn. And it’s one of the trees that used to flourish all acrossed the beaver flooded south, but now has become inseasingly rare, Rare enough apparently that they’re willing to kill beavers to maintain it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Indiana cracks down on destructive beavers at preserve

MOUNT VERNON, Ind. (AP) — Wildlife officials are culling beavers and demolishing their dams in a swampland nature preserve in southwestern Indiana to protect a species of oak tree rarely found in the state. Overcup oaks thrive in swamps, but beaver dams in the Twin Swamps Nature Preserve have elevated water levels so high that the trees have been damaged or killed, the Evansville Courier & Press reported.

Now, the state has stepped in to combat the threat at the 500-acre (200-hectare) property in Mount Vernon.

“It’s actually altering the very habitat the nature preserve was designed to protect,” said Tom Swinford, the program manager at the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. “We had to take action.”

Hey you know what else kills Overcap Oaks? DROUGHT! FIRE! Gosh I hope when you kill all those swamp maintainers you don’t actually endanger them even more. Here’s what the SF guide has to say about it.

Fires brought on by severe drought in some areas may decimate large numbers of overcup oak seedlings and damage the bark of older trees, exposing them to disease produced by the heart rot fungus.

Hmm that doesn’t look good. I hope Twin swamps has some kind of plan to save water now that all the beavers are dead.

Swinford said beavers thrive in the southwestern nature preserve because they’re a tough species that don’t have many predators to keep their natural balance.

“There will always be beavers at Twin Swamps,” he said.

Hmm are you sure about that?

Beavers are great at making wet and swampy lands where cypress and wateroak can thrive, I sure hope you have a plan about how to replace the wetland after all the beavers are dead. I guess you can always change the name to twin-gulch preserve?