Vermont – Worth A Dam

Again today there is lots of beaver news. I’ll walk you through it and save the most fun for last. First this from Vermont – where they know a thing or two about living with beavers.

BEAVER UNDAMMED

BENSON — Armed with flexible piping, a cage made of metalfencing, two cinder blocks and a few tools, a group of students scrambled through the woods Thursday morning.

The group of nine from Stafford Technical Center’s Forestry, Natural Resources and Horticulture program were helping to build a beaver baffle at the Shaw Mountain Natural Area in Benson.

Accompanied by their instructors, employees of the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department and the Nature Conservancy of Vermont, the group made the more than half-mile hike up the rocky wooded terrain carrying the necessary supplies for the “beaver baffle” they were going to install.
A beaver baffle is a structure that controls water in a beaver impoundment by lowering the water level by moving water out where it wouldn’t normally be flowing, said Rachel Bakerian, a state beaver specialist.

“We can maintain the water level and control it, but the beaver can still maintain their habitat,” said Kim Royar, wildlife biologist with the department.

Hurray for forestry students that know how to install a flow device! I’m not sure why it’s a baffle and not a pond leveler or castor master but FULL MARKS for effort boys and girls.

I was very happy to see folks doing the sensible thing and even MORE happy when I saw this:

COLUMN: Thanks to beaver dam, Crooked Pond in Boxford has more water

The water level on both sides of the dam was not what they expected. Due to the drought they had anticipated walking on the usually beaver flooded road to and from the base of Bald Hill on dry land. Another larger beaver dam across the east end of Crooked Pond where it drains to a tributary of Fish Brook has kept the water relatively high. Parts of the road flooded much of the year are even in this dry spell now still ankle deep.
The largely unseen but obviously active beavers are doing a great service for wildlife and plants throughout the state. It was that way four centuries ago before the English and French newcomers paid good wampum, iron knives and pots, and later beads to the Indians for beaver pelts. The beavers were soon gone.
This millennium thanks to protective, and we think enlightened laws, they are back in a big way. Next to humans beavers have been the most written about animals featured here in the Water Closet. The 17th century colonists sought out the low lands that beavers had inundated for ten thousand years. In them the soil was a meter or more thick of rich black muck. The English farmers dug drainage ditches and used the land mid to late summer. In the 20th century, without beavers or farmers, the areas become red maple swamps. The beavers now back have drowned the maples. The inundated areas called beaver meadows, with year round water and lots of light, are lush with life.

Keep in mind that this article is from Massachusetts, home of the many complainers about beavers. Our friends at Streamkeepers in Middletown have known the truth about beavers for years, and have been doing amazing work. Since I was raised Catholic I was not at all surprised to see this timely ending:

One-time chemist, now environmentalist Pope Francis, originator of the cyclical Laodato Si, would understand all this. We hope while here he visits wetlands to see what God’s creatures are doing, and that when he speaks to Congress he’ll cause blinders to be shed.

I can’t tell you how much I love the idea of the pope approving beavers. It makes me smile very much.

Okay, one last thing to smile about and its the finally PERFECT use for beaver traps. No, really.

Pot grow-op guarded by beaver traps found along Salmon River

The Chipman RCMP have taken down an outdoor marijuana grow operation in Chipman that was guarded with beaver traps.

The grow-op was found along the banks of the Salmon River in Gaspereau Forks.

hahaha…I could say lots of things, like how beaver traps are “painless” and “humane” and people shouldn’t worry. But the broken website is even MORE broken on my mac, so I’ll spare you any more formatting flaws.

Sweet Pond: beavers to the rescue?

Let me suggest that nothing be done about the dismantling of the dam at Sweet Pond other than to allow beavers to come in and build a new dam.

Beavers are very skillful engineers and have been known to construct very large, expert dams. They also maintain their work. This would cost the taxpayers nothing. A few lodges would go up in the prime real estate thus created.

The wildlife and fish could return!

What about road flooding? Beavers build a lake only to the depth necessary for them to survive over the winter and to maintain the safety of their lodges. Sweet Pond rests low in relation to the road, anyway.

What about giardiasis, the parasitic disease that can infect people’s small intestine, causing diarrhea and other symptoms? Well, not all beavers carry it — and many other animals, like deer, do. It is never wise to ingest untreatedwater anywhere, whether beavers reside in a lake.

Beaver ponds, interestingly, function largely as water purifiers. I used to live on a Native American reservation where the sewage treatment system and pools were not maintained for a few years. Raw sewage just poured into the creek.

However, when a federal inspector finally appeared, he found that the water tested fine downstream. Then three small beaver ponds were discovered between the plant and where he tested the water. The beavers were cleaning the stream — that is, their ponds exposed the water to the oxygen and light necessary to purify the water.

This became a joke on the reservation as the old Indian who lived on that property said, “I’d been meaning to go out and shoot those beavers someday, but I just never got around to it!”

Similarly, any beavers who appear to fix the dam and restore the pond ought to be left unmolested to do their work.

I used to live in Guilford off Sweet Pond Road and came home from work at midnight. One night, I saw something approaching in the road near Sweet Pond: a beaver dragging a tree far heavier than itself right down the middle of the road.

I stopped the truck. The beaver seemed quite annoyed as he repositioned the long tree, front and back, over to the left side so we could both use the road.

I stayed still watching it drag the tree past the truck. It didn’t even look up at me as it passed.

Let the beavers take care of Sweet Pond!

Cecelia Blair, Windsor