Courtesy photo) A young beaver feeds after being released near a stream on the Dixie National Forest in May. The Garfield County Commission is telling state biologists not to plant the animals there as part of the state's beaver recovery plan.

Southern Utah officials nix beaver transplants

Garfield County questions motives of program, tells state to take rodents elsewhere.

Beavers may be good for the land and water, but one southern Utah county is saying “thanks but no thanks” to the state’s offer of web-footed transplants.

Garfield County, stretching from Panguitch past Boulder and including the lush streams on Boulder Mountain and the Aquarius Plateau, is historic al beaver country and therefore a target area for the state’s beaver recovery plan. Environmentalists had high hopes for naturally restoring wetlands there, but this month the Garfield County Commission told state biologists to take their rodents elsewhere.

Wow, the Salt Lake Tribune is doing an excellent job on the ‘slow bleed’ of this story. First we had two gentle op-eds on the topic and now we have a fantastic hard cover of the issue from Brandon Loomis, who isn’t afraid to go into detail about the fact that they are saying ‘no’ to beavers because they are environmentalist-phobic.

It’s not that they dislike beavers, commissioners say. They’re just suspicious of the motives.

“We’re not against the beaver,” Commission Chairman Clare Ramsay said, “but we’ve been down that road before on a lot of different issues over the years. We know that it might become a tool for the environmental community to use against cattle.”

Thanks for clearing that up for us Clare. “I’m not worried about beavers, its people we can’t trust!” Hey, could that be the next bumper-sticker for Utah? Hmm, there might be copy right issues though, it reminds me a little bit of this

I don’t know why a county would choose to broadcast its paranoia in the press so vociferously, but they certainly did a number on themselves with this decision. The article even reviews the financial benefit of beavers put together in the economic report commissioned by the Grand Canyon Trust. And just in case the reader still wasn’t sure who the ‘white hats’ are in the article it ends with this flourish

State biologists will honor the county’s request but seek to reopen talks later in hopes of gaining permission to stock beavers in some high-elevation streams, where they can’t damage irrigation canals or other structures, said Bruce Bonebrake, southern Utah regional supervisor for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources.

“We’d very much like to transplant them there,” Bonebrake said. “They’re great riparian managers. You really can’t get a species that does better management as far as wildlife habitat and sediment control.”

I would say the press is playing for the beaver team and you can set a timer to see how long the commissioners are able to hold out against them. It’s obvious which side has done its homework in this debate. Congratulations! Even the comments to the article are mostly pro-beaver. Take this one for example from an ex-trapper Jim Bridger:

I did more than my share to exterminate beavers in these here parts. Now I repent! I’ve come to see that what I did was wrong. I won’t trap another beaver ever again, or a mink, bear, bobcat, coyote or wolf. And I will help return beavers to their historic homes. Now if an old curmudgeon like me can learn something new and change his ideas and his ways, why can’t those darned cow boys? Maybe I’ll take to trapping and relocating them to Antarctica.

Good work Mary O’Brien!

Reformed trappers interested in relocation! Fatted calf time! But no hamburgers for the commissioners unless they admit that they are scared of the wrong things and agree to come back to the table.

I like to eek out the “beaver stupid” news with a few morsels of good news along the way, but this is a whopping dose! Seems the state of Utah is giving Washington a run for its money in the “castor magnum civicus” contest this year. The Salt Lake Tribune is hooking with the State Department of Wildlife Resources to explain about the benefits of beavers in the habitat. They’ve launched a great video (below) and a major news article both featuring reporter Brett Prettyman. The article starts by mentioning how many beavers we used to have and how that changed with trapping. He writes:

Now, beavers are in demand again, not for their fur but for their engineering expertise, and the water conservation and forest restoration that result from their dam-building skills. “Dams change everything,” said Mary O’Brien, the Utah Forests program manager for Grand Canyon Trust. “Where water was once just passing through the landscape it is suddenly pausing there, recharging aquifers,creating a riparian area and making a place for all kinds of wildlife to live.”

Wow any article that starts with that sentence has my full attention. Its way better than “Once Upon A Time”…I could just nestle in for a nice cozy read.

The beavers may be ready to jump back into areas where their ancestors once felled aspen and willow, but catching live wild animals and hauling them around the state requires planning. That plan is being completed now by a committee formed by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) and will be presented to the public in a series of Regional Advisory Council Meetings in December. If approved by the Utah Wildlife Board, it will become the state’s first management plan for beavers.

Got that? A state beaver management plan that specifically addresses the benefits of beavers to the habitat. The plan, available here, will be voted on in December, and is facing some opposition from people who have long thought of beavers as only pests. To do this at the statewide level is a massive undertaking and involves the re-education of lots of people, including some stalwarts inside the DWR who should know better.

I am wholly impressed with this effort and the smart way it is being launched. It was pointed out to me that Mr. Prettyman’s name rather notably resembles my own, and it is true that his name is only a keystroke to the left away from mine. Similar spirits surely. The other hero of the article is Mary O’Brien, who lead the “sermon on the mount” at the Lands Council conference last year.

O’Brien likes to wonder what the forests of the Southwest looked like before the days when beavers were trapped to such low numbers. She suspects most of the mountain valleys had meandering creeks with lush wetlands frequented by a vast range of wildlife. It is an image she would like to see for herself in places where streams have turned into raging straight-cut channels that erode the banks and carry the water to faraway places.”Dams slow the flow of water coming off the mountains. They act like speed bumps and spread the water out on the land,” she said. “They create a dramatic change in the hydrology of the landscape, and that is a change that may serve us all.”

Ahhh Mary! You’re a girl after my own heart! Do you have any friends in California? I would love to meet them!