If there’s one thing that really annoys me, (and lord knows there are several) it’s a conservation commission that doesn’t like beavers. You know the drill: too much nature or the WRONG KIND of nature in our natural area. Apparently certain people like the otters and the baby ducks, but dammit a beaver just doesn’t belong!
Amy the artist at the festival commented how the intolerance for beavers is almost like a kind of racism.And I had to agree. It’s speecism – pure and simple. Apparently Rhode Island suffers badly from it.
Losing battle at Cedar Swamp
NORTH SMITHFIELD – Paul Soares is on a mission. He has a bone to pick with local wildlife, but it’s not squirrels eating from the birdfeeder or mice in the attic he’s worried about. Instead, the resident and chairman of the North Smithfield Conservation Commission is determined to do something about the beavers that moved into a section of public land near Rte. 146 a few years ago and quietly staked their claim, keeping it all but inaccessible to the humans who live nearby.
Once each week, Soares climbs into his red Toyota 4Runner and heads to Cedar Swamp, a 69.5-acre town property donated from the estate of Philip Silva in 2010. The property includes about 30 acres of swampland and another 40 acres of forested highlands and stretches from Rte. 146 to the power substation, ending just shy of Greenville Road at its eastern edge.
Once used as a hunting preserve, the property is home to dragonflies, deer and wood ducks and offers an oasis of wildlife just beyond the border with Woonsocket. It’s an area Soares and other members of the Conservation Commission hope to make accessible to members of the public for hiking and other activities, but a number of challenges stand in their way.
“We’re trying to get this to the point where the public can have some decent access. It’s been a long struggle, and so far the beavers are winning,” said Soares.
Those dam rodents! I knew it!
“When the flooding is at its worst, this is all underwater,” Soares explained. “People can’t walk through here, and there’s 40-some acres of beautiful highlands you can’t get to.”
When The Valley Breeze first checked in on the property in 2016, Soares was supervising the installation of one of two “beaver deceivers,” water diversion systems costing about $1,200 apiece. Since then, the beavers have built another dam downstream, raising water levels beyond the systems’ ability to lower them. Conservation Commission members have tried other methods to control the flooding over the years, breaking up dams and building a bridge of logs that was washed away in the rising waters, but the beavers continue to rebuild.
Ooh how you’ve suffered! Can I just pause here to say that I think a beaver lodge among cypress trees is just about the most beautiful thing I know?
Beavers are very invested little rodents and they just continue to cut things down and build dams and there’s really nothing you can do to stop them,” he said.
There is one solution the Conservation Commission hasn’t tried yet. State law allows the trapping of nuisance beavers with a permit, provided they are not moved to another location where they could cause problems for someone else. Instead, the beavers must be killed, a measure Soares said the Conservation Commission is trying to avoid.
Mighty white of you.
For now, he and other members access the back section of the property by unlocking a gated area normally closed to vehicles and driving straight through the half-foot puddle to where an old logging road climbs out of the swamp on the other side. After passing a marker where Soares buried his Jack Russell terrier, Lucy, when she died in 2016, the road winds off into the woods, looping through 40 acres of heavy forest. It’s land that’s rarely seen except by members of the Conservation Commission who maintain the road and the occasional ATV rider trespassing on town property.
“They just keep expanding their range and causing problems,” he said.
I would say it’s a good thing you’re not killing the beavers, because four of the five comments on this article are defending them, and assuming you really want this land for hunting I would think you’d like to have more (not less) game species? Ever wonder what happens to your swamp and precious cypress when beavers leave the area?
Trust me, it isn’t pretty.
