Again today there is lots of beaver news. I’ll walk you through it and save the most fun for last. First this from Vermont – where they know a thing or two about living with beavers.
BENSON — Armed with flexible piping, a cage made of metalfencing, two cinder blocks and a few tools, a group of students scrambled through the woods Thursday morning.
The group of nine from Stafford Technical Center’s Forestry, Natural Resources and Horticulture program were helping to build a beaver baffle at the Shaw Mountain Natural Area in Benson.
Accompanied by their instructors, employees of the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department and the Nature Conservancy of Vermont, the group made the more than half-mile hike up the rocky wooded terrain carrying the necessary supplies for the “beaver baffle” they were going to install.
A beaver baffle is a structure that controls water in a beaver impoundment by lowering the water level by moving water out where it wouldn’t normally be flowing, said Rachel Bakerian, a state beaver specialist.
“We can maintain the water level and control it, but the beaver can still maintain their habitat,” said Kim Royar, wildlife biologist with the department.
Hurray for forestry students that know how to install a flow device! I’m not sure why it’s a baffle and not a pond leveler or castor master but FULL MARKS for effort boys and girls.
I was very happy to see folks doing the sensible thing and even MORE happy when I saw this:
COLUMN: Thanks to beaver dam, Crooked Pond in Boxford has more water
The water level on both sides of the dam was not what they expected. Due to the drought they had anticipated walking on the usually beaver flooded road to and from the base of Bald Hill on dry land. Another larger beaver dam across the east end of Crooked Pond where it drains to a tributary of Fish Brook has kept the water relatively high. Parts of the road flooded much of the year are even in this dry spell now still ankle deep.
The largely unseen but obviously active beavers are doing a great service for wildlife and plants throughout the state. It was that way four centuries ago before the English and French newcomers paid good wampum, iron knives and pots, and later beads to the Indians for beaver pelts. The beavers were soon gone.
This millennium thanks to protective, and we think enlightened laws, they are back in a big way. Next to humans beavers have been the most written about animals featured here in the Water Closet. The 17th century colonists sought out the low lands that beavers had inundated for ten thousand years. In them the soil was a meter or more thick of rich black muck. The English farmers dug drainage ditches and used the land mid to late summer. In the 20th century, without beavers or farmers, the areas become red maple swamps. The beavers now back have drowned the maples. The inundated areas called beaver meadows, with year round water and lots of light, are lush with life.
Keep in mind that this article is from Massachusetts, home of the many complainers about beavers. Our friends at Streamkeepers in Middletown have known the truth about beavers for years, and have been doing amazing work. Since I was raised Catholic I was not at all surprised to see this timely ending:
One-time chemist, now environmentalist Pope Francis, originator of the cyclical Laodato Si, would understand all this. We hope while here he visits wetlands to see what God’s creatures are doing, and that when he speaks to Congress he’ll cause blinders to be shed.
I can’t tell you how much I love the idea of the pope approving beavers. It makes me smile very much.
Okay, one last thing to smile about and its the finally PERFECT use for beaver traps. No, really.
Pot grow-op guarded by beaver traps found along Salmon River
The Chipman RCMP have taken down an outdoor marijuana grow operation in Chipman that was guarded with beaver traps.
The grow-op was found along the banks of the Salmon River in Gaspereau Forks.
hahaha…I could say lots of things, like how beaver traps are “painless” and “humane” and people shouldn’t worry. But the broken website is even MORE broken on my mac, so I’ll spare you any more formatting flaws.
