I know what you’ve been thinking. The beaver news these past days has been so excellent and positive, beaver benefits are so well understood even around the world, that the tide has finally turned. Why would anyone need to fight for them any more? Clearly everyone’s on the same team now, playing for the good of the planet. You might be thinking “It’s finally over! The battle’s done and we really won! Lay down my sword, unbuckle my armor and rest my shield against the hearth. Let’s all have a jug of wine to celebrate. Because there’s no need to be a beaver warrior any more.”

But on that day, when every place in the nation and most in Canada understand the importance of beavers and values their presence on the landscape, when the people of the world can finally see the forest for the trees, and the water for the flooding —

There will still be Wisconsin.

How To Maintain Local Trout Streams? Often, It’s Through Explosives

Jeremy Irish, an assistant district supervisor with the USDA’s Wildlife Services program, triggered the blast, undoing some of this year’s construction by beavers in the area. In the process, he cleared another portion of one of northern Wisconsin’s best trout streams.

Hundreds of miles of northern Wisconsin’s best trout streams flow freely, providing excellent fish habitat and great fishing. But if beavers, and they dams they create, had their way, the landscape would be much different. Often, it’s humans like Irish who have to help strike the balance, doing it using fuses, detonations, and explosions.

“Beaver are a very unique animal. They can alter their habitat to suit themselves, and in the north here, they definitely need to do that to make it through the winter,” he said. “The difficulty is, in altering their habitat, they also create problems for other species. In this case, we’re talking about a cold water ecosystem to support brook trout populations and spawning habitat.”

Apparently the USDA has not yet released it’s ground breaking (ha) research on why trout in the state of Wisconsin would have evolved differently than the trout in every other part of the world, but apparently they have the proof. Because why else would they ever be spending all that money and time? Oh and did you know Wisconsin thinks they have more beavers now than they used to before the fur trade? And that these two species didn’t actually co-evolve because the situation got WORSE. Yup.

Maybe it’s the cheese curds.

Whatever the cause. there are clearly a few battles left to be fought in the state. There are really places that believe trout are happier with explosives in their water than with beavers. I wrote the reporter on this story yesterday and I’ll let you know i I hear anything back. But I wouldn’t put down your armor just yet.

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