It’s hard to appreciate beavers in South Carolina. Even if you’re an environmentalist and teach riparian ecology, apparently. Sigh.

ECOVIEWS: A beaver dam could test your environmental conscience

Whit Gibbons

My first evidence of something unusual happening came in autumn after a month of no rain when I measured the water level. I do this at least once a week downstream from our cabin and was surprised to find that instead of dropping an inch or so, it had actually risen 2 inches. I attributed it to mismeasurement until I took my walk.

Beavers are unquestionably keystone species in a region with small to moderate-size streams. They not only modify the habitat but can also change the environment in ways that dramatically influence the lives of animals, including people, and plants.

Beaver activity can result in big trees dying from flooding and smaller ones being debarked for food or cut down for dam construction. A mile downstream from my incipient beaver dam a larger one has flooded several acres, leaving tall, lifeless sweetgum and pine trees that began life in a terrestrial habitat and cannot persist in an aquatic one.

Animals are affected, too. Large aquatic salamanders called sirens thrive and become more abundant in pools of a stream created by beaver dams. We once observed more than 500 sirens along the margins of a small stream when a dam was removed and the water level dropped.

Cottonmouths, watersnakes and turtles are more apparent, and maybe even more abundant, around beaver dams, which create areas for basking on sunny days. Waterfowl, such as wood ducks, are attracted to the pond created above the dam. Clearly, beavers and their dams set the tone of the neighborhood for many wildlife species.

So close. So very close. I feel we are standing at the very threshold of almost discussing beaver benefits – peering through the keyhole at the verdant green garden on the other side. But Whit isn’t wild about beavers. And he’s surrounded by UGA buddies who feed him bad information.

Beavers live 35 to 50 years in zoos and more than 20 years in the wild.

One of the conundrums with beavers is that their positive traits – being chubby, cute, industrious pioneers – aren’t always enough to outweigh less desirable traits. I know folks who have had beavers cut down a beautiful dogwood tree, flood an area intended for a garden not a fish pond and dismantle a wooden boathouse to build the beaver lodge. The predicament is how to keep beavers for outdoor show-and-tell yet not have them misbehave, from a human’s point of view.

An ecofriendly society will always face perplexing wildlife problems and environmental dilemmas. Entertaining, yet potentially destructive, beavers are a good example of the complexity inherent in environmental preservation, with no simple solution as to how to handle the issue. A range of responses are available for dealing with nuisance wildlife. Which solution people choose will depend in part on their environmental conscience.

Whit is a reflective and thoughtful man with an ecological conscience. He wants to appreciate the inherent coolness of beavers because it’s fun to see wildlife in his creek, but he doesn’t want to be flooded out for 50 years. What’s a good man to do?

When information fails you its time to get better information. I’m glad you asked. First of all beavers don’t live for 50 years. Who ever wrote that down was wrong and should have their credentials surgically removed. I did read a scientific report that identified one as 19 once, but in the wild 10-15 years is an astoundingly good run.

Secondly, if beavers are flooding an area you can’t live with then you install a flow device and make the water a height you can tolerate. Here’s a video that will teach you how to do it cheaply yourself. I know these things work because they solved our problem for a decade. The first flow device was invented in your own state! But this works better and is cheaper to install. Oh, and if the bad beaver is eating your dogwoods try wrapping the trees with wire or painting them with sand.

Beavers do cause problems. True. And cars get flat tires. We can fix them.

Why not just trap the beavers and get rid of them instead of fixing the problem? First of all you can’t, because more beavers will return to adequate habitat and you’ll be in this fix all over again in a year or a season. But more importantly all the wildlife that depends on the beaver dam will be lost if you remove the beaver. Meanwhile, that dam is removing nitrogen, letting trout fatten, filtering toxins, and regulating water flow which god knows you need in South Carolina and Georgia!

The article concludes by saying Whit teaches at the University of Georgia’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. I can’t think of a more useful place to start a conversation. Our retired UGA librarian friend needs to have coffee with him and nudge some useful information his way. Hey, maybe you could take this image into your classroom?