OPINION: Are beavers always the answer? Not really.

Beavers, through their assiduous dam building, can recharge groundwater and provide habitat for fish and wildlife. In the Pacific Northwest, for example, managers are bringing back beaver as part of trout and salmon management.

“God bless beavers and their industrious nature,” writes Trout Unlimited’s Idaho-based Chris Hunt in Hatch magazine. “They make habitat for the fish we love, and opportunities to catch them.” True enough, in Idaho.

But the notion, ubiquitous in America, that all beavers everywhere are a panacea for what ails an ecosystem is misinformed. Yes, beavers are beneficial — in the right places.

For those of you playing along at home you should already be guessing who wrote this article and what comes next. Ted Williams is a revered writer about fly fishing and audubon and all things water. If you search for his name on this website you will find that he has given his opinions on beavers many times before…

Consider the debacle in Nevada. This from Kim Toulouse, the Nevada Department of Wildlife’s former conservation educator: “Historically, virtually every stream in the northern half of Nevada held some form of cutthroat trout. Additionally, many small-order streams also held native redband and bull trout. When the push started (for trout recovery) we discovered that many single-order streams were infested with heavy populations of beavers.

Infested? Great use of objective scientific language there Kim. How do you really feel about beavers? I’m not sure I can tell…

“Extremely high numbers of beaver dams on these systems led to loss of gene flow and precluded the ability of fish to move up and down these systems. Additionally, fish found it difficult to find suitable spawning grounds due to heavy siltation caused by the dams. The loss of riparian habitat led to erosion, more siltation, less shade, higher water temperatures, loss of native riparian vegetation, and establishment of noxious invasive plants.” So Nevada initiated major beaver control. But politicians, incited by the Humane Society of the U.S., shut it down.

Because you know what a crazy strong force THE HUMANE SOCIETY is in NEVADA for god sakes. They practically write the laws. I mean that’s the story we tell ourselves in my state of Massachusetts so Nevada must be exactly the same, right?

Beaver damage to Minnesota and Wisconsin trout streams is even worse. Fisheries managers have to hire Wildlife Services, a federal agency, to trap beavers and blow up dams. It’s expensive, so only a small percentage of streams can be salvaged.

And Trout Unlimited reports that in Minnesota’s Knife River watershed, “artificially high beaver numbers…threaten the survival of coldwater fisheries, as well as the health of the watershed and Lake Superior.” But an outfit ironically called “Advocates for the Knife River Watershed” is fighting to nix beaver control, circulating junk science and such fictions as “beaver have been totally eradicated in the whole Knife River valley — over 200 square miles.”

Oh my goodness. Those crazy beaver lovers are taking over the world. And how exactly are the high numbers of beavers artificial? Are you implying they were introduced?

California’s Silver King Creek watershed is the only refuge for threatened Paiute cutthroat trout, yet overpopulated beavers block migration and destroy habitat. It got so bad in Four-Mile Creek that Trout Unlimited volunteers had to reroute the stream.

If you were to look this up you’d find an article from trout unlimited which says that beavers are NOT NATIVE to the sierras and were INTRODUCED so they blocked all those cutthroat from getting around…NEVER MIND research…

“The biggest problem I see is that beavers move into an area that doesn’t have enough forage, and they abandon their dams,” said retired state fisheries biologist Bill Sommer. “When beavers leave, the dams blow out and that causes erosion.”

You mean the biggest problem is when beavers leave? Is that what you’re saying?

Aldo Leopold could grasp two realities about deer simultaneously. Were he still alive, he’d applaud Phil Monahan, who wrote this in Trout Unlimited’s Trout Magazine: “Many anglers see the beavers’ work as predominately destructive — turning a babbling trout stream into a slow-moving wetland, for instance. Wildlife biologists recognize that each of these ‘destructive’ effects has a flip side: situations in which that very same effect is beneficial to trout.

“After looking at all the data, then, the question, ‘Are beavers good or bad for trout streams?’ can be answered only with a definitive: ‘It depends.’”

It depends? Are you sure you want to leave it so open ended Ted? You haven’t said a single good thing about beavers yet so how exactly does it “Depend”? Of course never mind that deep pools made by the beavers don’t dry up in the summer or freeze in the winter. Just leave all that water business aside. Beavers are bad. You know it and only the supreme power of the humane society makes people like them.

Best part is that this article runs along side a photo of a nutria. Which I believe is fully illustrative of how much Ted Williams understands about this subject.

This morning’s title is the actual header of the mortified email sent to me yesterday by famed and familiar author Ben Goldfarb who had always considered Ted Williams a kind of conservation legend.

Ahh, how the mighty have fallen. Over beavers, of course.

Thinking Like a Trout Stream

A case in point is its inability to accept biological realities of beaver overpopulation.

The causes of ecological damage by deer and beaver are identical. Wolves, the major predator of both species, have been extirpated or severely reduced in most deer and beaver range. Heavy logging in deer and beaver range has replaced poorhabitat old growth with deer and beaver candy such as aspen and willow.

Beavers in natural abundance have usually been good for native ecosystems, trout included. In much of the Pacific Northwest, beavers are depleted, and managers are rightly attempting recovery.

You can see right away where this is going. The argument is that numbers of beavers when controlled by wolves and mt lions are helpful. But the number we have NOW! Oy vey! He starts by quoting the praise of beavers given by Oregon and Washington fisheries.

Beavers .. . create reservoirs of cool water that salmon need to survive,” report the Northwest Treaty Tribes of western Washington State in a news release titled “Beavers Relocated to Improve Salmon Habitat.”

Such assertions are accurate in Oregon, Idaho, and Washington, at least on most high-gradient streams. But when they’re cited as alleged evidence that all beaver populations are great for all species in all states, they’re flat wrong; and they hurt the cause of native ecosystems. Do a Google search for beavers and trout, and almost all you’ll find are effusions about the alleged value of beavers everywhere and excoriations of fisheries managers who attempt to modestly control gross irruptions.

Oh those little NOAA scientists and their crazy ILLUSIONS! Obviously what you do in the Pacific states doesn’t matter because they’re already insane anyway. But what here in Wisconsin or Massachusetts we’re OVERRUN with beavers.

BUT BEAVER BLIGHT IN THE EAST IS MILD COMPARED TO THAT IN THE MIDWEST. Angler/photographer Len Harris of Richland Center, Wisconsin, describes the pre-hangover high that comes with the discovery of a new beaver pond: “It’s smile-producing at first because of bigger trout. But the flooding cycle cleans out that dam and all the barren bank. The streams widen and increase in temperature. . . . My home waters have warmed by at least four degrees in the last twenty years. This is from a combination of beavers not being kept in check and climate change. Warmer water, resulting gill lice, and resulting competition from brown trout have stacked the deck against the natives. Humans need to limit beaver expansion near our brook trout streams. Thankfully, a new regime is in place in Wisconsin as of 2019. Science will be back on the books, and our DNR will once again be staffed with caretakers of the streams, not climate-change deniers.”

So wait a minute. You’re equating beaver believers with climate change deniers? Because they’re both on teams you dislike? That’s so entirely provoking I’m not even sure what to do with you. Ben says you’re revered and I’m sure [Brutus is an honorable man} so I won’t write what I’d like to. But maybe you could spend five minutes in an actual trout stream with an actual beaver dam before you accept funds to write something ridiculous like this again? Or hey maybe snorkel in it and see all the baby trout swimming around? He goes on to describe several “misguided” environmental groups that think beavers have any value. I’m just sorry he didn’t mention US.

“There are a lot of people in our organization who really value the beaver ponds as something that attracts wildlife and increases biodiversity,” the group’s chair, Corlis West, told the Lake County News Chronicle. “Not just beavers, but for moose and mink and waterfowl and frogs and turtles.”

“They [beaver ponds] provide special habitat,” added retired University of Minnesota Duluth geology professor John Green. “They’re wildlife magnets for breeding and migrating birds. All kinds of wildlife like them, and people enjoy those.”

Notice how he goes after the little guys like beaversprite not NOAA fisheries and their years of data. He knows exactly what he’s doing here. When a giant like Ted Williams writes a giant amount of BS like this, it’s going to take another giant to knock him down. David and her little GIFs aren’t going to do it. But good LORD this is irritating. Does he really truly believe that there are MORE beavers now than there were in 1730? Even knowing the numbers of pelts reported? Really? Even knowing all the economies they funded?

Does Ted secretly know a story about the great native american salmon famine of 1630 that all of us don’t?

SALMONIDS BENEFIT FROM BEAVERS IN MUCH OF THE WEST; but beaver irruptions are nuking lots of coldwater habitat even there.

Wildlife advocates need to keep two different thoughts about beavers in their heads simultaneously. Beavers in moderation can be good for coldwater species. What’s bad for coldwater species is not beavers; it is too many beavers—unnatural proliferations caused by human activity, such as clear-cutting and wolf eradication. “Letting nature take its course” doesn’t mean sitting on our hands after we’ve disrupted natural balances.

The funniest part of this ENTIRE article, and believe me there are several, is that he presents the “pro-beaver” lobby as if we were SO powerful. As if we had frightened Fish and WIldlife in Nevada and California so that they’re afraid to do all the killing that’s required. As if we had scared people away from killing all the beavers they need to kill!

As a woman with her toes on the very front lines of beaver defense allow me to offer a counterpoint after reviewing 10 years of depredation permits in California alone:

You’re so funny, Ted. I think maybe you and Ben are going to have a dynamic discussion some day soon. And maybe Michael Pollock will want in on it. Worth A Dam will pay for the beer. I’ll just be over here. Trying to get over the giggles.

“It’s unlikely that managers will ever be able to restore more than a tiny fraction of trout streams destroyed by beavers. But, as Leopold wrote in a 1946 letter to his friend Bill Vogt: “That [a] situation appears hopeless should not prevent us from doing our best.”

Just a final thought. The famous Leopold and his famous son who inspired this article was famously ignorant about the importance of beavers. Neither of them had any idea how important beavers are to streams or fish. And I’m quoting two of the most knowledgeable voices I know on this matter. Aldo was a visionary voice who knew and understood many, many things. But beavers wasn’t one of them.

So it’s perfect that you frame this entire argument around him,