Trout restoration pays off in Oxford’s Barber’s Hollow Brook

Environmental consultant Glenn E. Krevosky measures the water temperature of Barber’s Hollow Brook near Prince Road in Oxford. (T&G Staff/PAUL KAPTEYN)

OXFORD — The 13, 3-inch Eastern brook trout swimming at the bottom of the bucket provided all the proof he needed.

Eight months ago Glenn E. Krevosky of EBT Environmental Consultants Inc. knelt beside a stone-faced, groundwater-fed incubator he built off Prince Street, and placed 400 Eastern brook trout eggs into a gravel nest.

Mr. Krevosky said he was fortunate that the one obstacle he didn’t have to face was the work of beavers in creating impoundments that would slow the stream flow, raise the water temperature and reduce clarity.

“The stream temperature is constant and the reduced flow is to be expected during the summer months. A stream temperature that doesn’t spike from the heat of summer storm road runoff, and a steady flow across a gravel and cobble stream bottom are essential for trout,” he said.

He explained that in addition to temperature and sediment concerns from storm runoff, Barber’s Hollow Brook water quality for coldwater fish species had become compromised by beaver dams and invasive aquatic plant species.

Thank goodness Mr. K. was able to hatch those fish without all those pesky beaver dams around. Now the fry will have plenty of fin-room to swim around in – certainly there won’t be as many of those award multi-legged BUGS taking up their space.

One wonders what the precious fish will eat?

But never mind. Mr. K. is committed to his beaverless streams and his factless theories. He’s so committed that I’ve written him two other times in the past six years. The first was in 2009 when he was famously referenced as an expert in the great case of the “invasive purple loosestrife” – for which he blamed (who else) beavers.

Trouble is, no one really wants to eat it, it’s hard to pull up, it survives horrific conditions, and it ruins things for the shoreline critters. There’s some effort to introduce a beetle that is controlling it naturally (how could that possibly go wrong?) but in the mean time, guess who the great state of Massachusetts has decided to blame?

Beavers!

Remember, this is a state that outlawed cruel traps in 1996, and has been whining about it since the moment the bill was signed. Massachusetts bemoans the change and says that their population has increased by 60,000 beavers since the law was passed.

Are you following me? Because there are more beavers, there are more wetlands, and (insert horror music here) more pernicious purple loosestrife!

Goodness I have been in this beaver biz a long time. I can’t believe I recognized him right away. I wonder if Mr. Krevosky knows about me? Or if I have any kind of starring role in his nightmares? Well, he abandoned the loosestrife meme fairly quickly, and marched boldly into water temperature by 2013. I actually wrote one of my favorite columns EVER about it.

Urban Legends of Beavers

Do you remember that story, back in fourth of fifth grade, you heard at a sleepover with friends? Two of the friends you had known since 2nd grade but one girl was someone else’s friend, or neighbor, or cousin and she was rumored to have slightly more street cred on account of her parents were divorced, or her mother had died, or her brother was in jail. And when the last pizza had been eaten and all the lights were out and you were huddled in sleeping bags on the living room rug or the back yard, she started with that spooky story in that absolutely chilling and unforgettable voice:

“Who stole my golden arm?”

And of course, even at 10, you knew the story was impossible and that ghosts weren’t real and that even if they were people don’t ever make arms out of solid gold, and you might have mumbled so all the way through at intervals but once Elvira leaped from the grave and shouted “YOU GOT IT!” and that terrifying story was over you couldn’t wait to think about who you were going to tell it to next. All the other kids must have too because pretty soon the story was all over school and was starting to get little adjustments, like the woman had been murdered for her golden arm, or it was actually a golden leg. It was a self-reproducing meme that was perpetuating itself like a virus through the primary grades. And even today, just saying the words has a kind of ring to it, and you can remember something of that chill. And it doesn’t matter whether its true, because its not that kind of story.

Which brings us naturally to the topic of beaver dams, water temperature and fish.

I like writing about beavers best when I can figure out a way to make the topic seem absolutely relevant to your life. Then after a nice populist intro I can throw in the science I need to back it up and wrap the whole thing up with a bow. That column I buttressed with Michael Pollock’s breathtaking graphs on stream temperature and hyporheic exchange at beaver dams. I guess Mr. K. never read it. Or read it with his eyes closed.

I’m reminded of the quote at the end of Rick Lanman’s emails.

“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.”

– Thomas Paine

Just remember, the arc of ecology is long, but it bends towards beavers.

Let’s say (and why not?) that early settlers accidentally introduced an invasive plant that they originally thought was a good idea — great for bees, medicine, and kinda pretty. Let’s say they encouraged said plant, gave the seeds to their neighbors, and were very pleased that it reproduced so well in lots of different areas. The plant grew especially well in wetlands, which they thought at the time was okay too. Fortunately about the time they figured out that this plant wasn’t very good for the animals and the environment there were less wetlands to worry about. Remember, early trapping records say there were tens of beavers for every mile of stream, and when we killed millions of them, we lost much of our wetlands and stopped the spread of that difficult plant.

Two birds. One stone, so to speak.

I’m talking of course about this hideous villain. It’s called “Purple Loosestrife” and has taken hold in the north east and choked out other, kinder plants. Yecch! Brace yourself, the image is pretty grisly.

Trouble is, no one really wants to eat it, it’s hard to pull up, it survives horrific conditions, and it ruins things for the shoreline critters. There’s some effort to introduce a beatle that is controlling it naturally (how could that possibly go wrong?) but in the mean time, guess who the great state of Massachusetts has decided to blame?

Beavers!

Remember, this is a state that outlawed cruel traps in 1996, and has been whining about it since the moment the bill was signed. Instead of using crushing Conibear, snares, or leghold traps, you must now painstakingly catch them in a cyclone fencing suitcase, keep them safe until morning and then shoot them very politely through the head. Oh the humanity! How inconvenient! Even though it is still perfectly legal to kill beavers, and a third of the year you can do so without a permit, and all year you can kill them the old way pretty much whenever any human property is threatened, Massachusetts bemoans the change and says that their population has increased by 60,000 beavers since the law was passed.

Are you following me? Because there are more beavers, there are more wetlands, and (insert horror music here) more pernicious purple loosestrife!

Enter Mr. Glenn E. Krevosky of EBT Environmental Consulting. He has a theory, and like all good theories, it blames the rodent. He says that beaver dams cause flooding, destroy native plants and then make space for Loosestrife to take over. If there were fewer dam beavers, (he has persuasively shouted to the media), we could rid ourselves of this purple menace once and for all. Of course I went immediately to research his copius studies proving this brilliant hypothesis, and saw that the sum total of all literature published in peer review journals on this theory is zero. No research whatsoever. Nada. Not that this has troubled the media, mind you. They are perfectly happy to write down what someone from a very environmental sounding company says. (Of course I couldn’t find EBT consulting either, so who knows what E.B.T. stands for? Everybody Blames Them?)

Here’s the thing: no one’s studying this, so no one knows. From the University of Michigan

Although there are some studies concerning purple loosestrife’s superior competitive ability compared to other wetland species, there are surprisingly few field or laboratory experiments that identify the traits that contribute to purple loosestrife’s competitive success or that monitor its colonization inspecific habitats over time.

Still, a scientist like Mr, Krevosky can’t let little things like facts stand in his way when the future of crushing traps is at stake. He “believes” beavers are responsible for the increasing loosestrife population. This is still America isn’t it? We are all entitled to our beliefs! One might object to several papers printing his unproven beliefs as if they were fact, but why quibble? I may have my own belief that the more bad things he says about beavers the more likely he is to close difficult consulting contracts with Fish and Wildlife or Public Works, but the important thing is to share our beliefs. Right?

What would make a blogger bold enough to write this article in defense of beavers? How could I know more than the owner of an environmental consulting firm? Just who in the heck do I think I am anyway? Ahh…Guess what the University of Michigan says prevents propagation of the species? Ah go on, guess. Flooding. Turns out that plant can’t make babies under water. Flooding an area for an enduring period of time is listed as one way to get rid of the plant and discourage new growth — like when the water level is raised from a dam, for instance.

Just sayin’.