Busy beaver poses problem
“They just struck out on their own and looked for a place that was a suitable habitat,” Keith Wardlaw, interim parks manager, said. “If you were a beaver and living in the mountains, you’d have found the right place.”
But if you were a beaver, your home at 25th and Spring Creek Drive would the potential for some real-world impacts. Park and residential amenities such as cottonwood trees and other foliage could suffer thousands of dollars in damage. Trees weakened by your incisors could potentially fall and injure Laramie residents walking through LaPrele Park.
“We’ve come to the conclusion that with the amount of material that they’ve pulled into the channel there to build a dam we’re going to have to go ahead and remove that material,” Wardlaw said. “It does present a flooding situation there if we get a heavy runoff or if we get a rainstorm along the face of the mountain out here on Sherman Hills, that would potentially cause some kind of damage in that neighborhood.”
Hence the trapping signs. At least they warn humans about their intentions because there are plenty of places where it happens without warning and pets are needlessly killed. Beavers, of course, are always needfully killed. Well in this case relocated. Which is slightly less bad, but since they don’t even know how many beavers there are and its winter I’m going to assume there may be death involved.
No one’s certain exactly where the beaver, or beavers, which have made their dam just past the east end of LaPrele Park, came from, but it’s most likely they came up from the river. Wardlaw said he’s likely a young beaver who moved up the creek channel from the Laramie River in late October or early November looking for a good home after reaching maturity.
“From our best estimate at this point in time, we think it’s probably just one, but there may be two,” he said. “They probably got thrown out, so they’re looking for a new home, and that was the first spot they came to that looked good, I guess.”
But it’s likely they won’t be there for long. In order to mitigate the dangers of having a beaver in town, the City of Laramie has contracted with a local trapper to capture the castor alive and move him to a location out of town.
“He’s going to come in and over the next couple of weeks sometime, and we’ll start trapping for that beaver and try to move him out of there,” Wardlaw said. “We’re not absolutely sure the beaver is still there. We haven’t’ seen a lot of traces of evidence at this point in time, so he may have already moved off on his own. But our intention at this point is to get him trapped before we take the dam out. Otherwise, we’ll just displace him to another point either farther upstream or downstream, or wherever.”
Once trapped, the Wyoming Game and Fish will release the beaver in a suitable point away from Laramie, Wardlaw said
Quick check. The temperature in Laramie tonight is supposed to drop to 10 degrees, and its supposed to snow on wednesday. This alleged beaver or beavers will be relocated away from any food cache or family, and there could be weeks more winter to brace for. Why are you relocating now? Or better yet, why are you relocating at all?
Although the beaver will likely be relocated, Wardlaw said he understands and respects the allure nature has for many Laramie residents, but added that must be balanced with best administering the city’s parks and other amenities.
“We’re always trying to take care of these citizen-owned facilities in the best way we can,” he said. “We understand they enjoy wildlife, and we do as well, but there are certain conditions that sometimes just cause us to have to move that wildlife to another location.”
Because you know beavers can’t possibly be tolerated in cities. That never works. The problems they cause can’t be mitigated and we just have to choose sometimes between nature and people.
