The Cedar Glen Golf Course of Massachusetts is in dire straights. A crisis of epic proportions faces their rolling greens and plaid pants. No one in the entire state or in the vast caverns of the Boston Globe or the local University can possibly offer them a shred of real advice. Yesterday the unthinkable happened and the golf course had to turn visitors away.
But a freshly constructed dam – a 25-foot-wide mound of stripped branches and bark – had turned swaths of pristine greenway into swampland.
The course was so waterlogged Thursday by beavers’ handiwork that Burton Page, who runs the business, was forced to close down for the day, estimating $10,000 in lost revenue.
Oh no! Not a beaver dam in a stream by a golf course in Massachusetts! Next thing you’ll tell me is that this would NEVER have happened if it wasn’t for those awful trapping rules that turned Bay State into beaver slums!
Laws to protect the animals have prevented the golf course’s managers from taking any action against their new tenants, who are blocking a section of the Saugus River, which runs through the grounds. Page is hoping for a compromise – keep the dam intact and divert the river to drain the course of standing water – but the Saugus Board of Health denied a request for an emergency permit to alter the water flow around the dam.
Let me get this straight. You asked for permission to divert the water around the dam so that the stream wouldn’t flood. Um, what would prevent the beavers from building a dam in THAT stream next? Well, I’m sure they had a fantastic idea for that too, because just look at their ingenious back-up plan.
In the short term, maintenance staff have put out wooden pallets to help golfers traipse from one hole to the next. But it’s a less-than-perfect fix. On Thursday, the water level was so high that the pallets floated away.
Oh man, you mean you got those kind of mean wooden pallets that float? Of all the rotten luck! What will you do now? Apparently the golf course was denied license to kill because health and human safety isn’t at stake. (And it happens to be May so orphaning a bunch of beavers isn’t usually great for public relations.) If only there were some dire consequences you could flog to get those stick-in-the-mud commissioners moving!
Ellsworth said he is also concerned that the standing water will cause an influx of mosquitoes that could carry disease and “I know [beavers] help the ecosystem and stuff,’’ Ellsworth said. “But when they start affecting homes and businesses, that’s another problem.’’
Really Mr. Ellsworth? Do you really know that beavers help the ecosystem and ‘stuff’? I’d be fascinated to hear you summarize some of the key examples of the way beaver improve the landscape and increase biodiversity. Since you already know about it we can just be quiet and let you review. I won’t interrupt. Come to think of it, do you know what doesn’t increase biodiversity at all? Golf Courses.
Scott Jackson, who teaches in the department of environmental conservation at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and specializes in beavers, said the animals were almost entirely wiped out of Massachusetts centuries ago because of excessive trapping and deforestation.
Slowly, colonies have moved back east from New York, but they only reached Eastern Massachusetts in the past 15 to 20 years, Jackson said.“I grew up in Massachusetts, and we never talked about beavers or saw them,’’ Jackson said. “All this has happened fairly quickly
At last a real expert! Okay, so now we brought in a beaver expert from Massachusetts and he can finally set things straight. Obviously he knows all about flow devices right? And how to solve flooding problems without ruining streams, right? And he knows about Beaver Solutions right? And he and Mike Callahan probably get together every month for a beer to chat about beaver management right? And Mike comes sometimes to lecture his class on long term solutions right?
Jackson explained that if a property owner with a beaver problem does not qualify for an emergency permit from a board of health, he or she can request a permit from the Conservation Commission, but that process requires a public hearing and could take weeks.Even then, there are concerns about reestablishing water flow too quickly; another property downstream can experience inadvertent flooding.
Sigh. See I told you. Rare prehistoric giant beavers in Massachusetts are the only possible explanation.
