Trappers breach dam, herons are missing

In late March a properly licensed trapper cut two 2-ft. wide 2 ½-ft. deep notches in a 170-ft. long beaver dam in the northern tip of Middleton. This dam and the rich wildlife habitat it produced are often featured here in the Water Closet. The trapper set two traps, legal by human law, near these breaches.

The breaches quickly did enormous damage to one of our favorite places in the Ipswich River watershed. At this critical time of the year for wildlife, about one hundred acres were soon without near as much water as the beavers there and we spectators have enjoyed for fourteen years since beavers built the dam in 1999.

The breaches allowed very roughly seven million cubic feet of water to leave the vast impoundment around Pond Meadow Pond and drain into Pond Meadow Brook which took it to Boston Brook and eventually the Ipswich River. The loss changed much of the shallow lake into a place of wide muddy beaches and flats strewn with tree trunks that had fallen and were partially pickled over past decades. Zero to three feet deep impoundment water and mud are somewhat acidic and low in oxygen, hence the preservation. In the draining, much of the impounded area went from 2 ½ feet deep to exposed bottom. In a few biologically active early spring days, rich habitat was greatly changed.

This entire article is so grippingly well written that I’m having a very hard time pulling important bits to share with you. Whatever else you do in your busy long weekend friday, you should really, really go read this. I have written before about the amazing habitat created by beaver ponds for the heron rookery. I have sent that article to folks in Oregon, Utah and Scotland. I have even sent it to a famous author who promptly went to photograph them for his book. These are some well-followed Great Blue Herons. It’s stunning that anyone would let this happen.

The most noticeable habitat there in the last decade has been the aerial great blue heron rookery. About 2005, it was started with a half dozen nests high in beaver drowned, needleless, white pines. There are over 40 nests now in pines still standing. On an afternoon visit the last day of April, we found the rookery strangely silent. The herons, except for three on nests near the Boxford State Forest side of the rookery, were gone. What happened? Our guess is that loss of water below them, due to the breaches, had led to abandonment.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Audubon turns into a feathered Worth A Dam. Lets hope this excellent writer decides to submit this article for publication in the chapter journal, and then in the national journal. People need to think about the wildlife they’re going to impact when they trap pesky beavers. Agencies need to require them to think. And articles like this need to make agencies think harder.

Another finding that bothered was the absence of frogs. Usually in hiking the perimeter of the impoundment we’d scare hundreds causing them to leap from shore edge to water. On the last two visits we only startled a half dozen along the remaining shallows. Frogs are certainly an important food for herons. Could their and other aquatic prey decline be reasons for herons moving away?

I don’t know a single person who’s not impressed by the uncannily long and awkwardly graceful Great Blue Heron. When we canoe in the coastal rivers one of our favorite sights is watching them incredibly land in the trees along the water’s edge – they precariously perch and tilt struggling to settle in and it always makes us laugh so hard I’ve never been able to get a good picture. Great Blue Herons are arguably the ‘flag ship’ species of all waterfowl. It’s a big deal to destroy the homes and of 40.

In our opinion there is a great loophole in the Massachusetts’ wetland protection laws, which don’t, with a few minor exceptions, otherwise allow the alteration of wetlands. All human activities that affect beaver impoundments should require a permit from both the Board of Health and the Conservation Commission. More regulations you say? Please put yourself with the voiceless animals in and above the beaver meadows and with their human admirers.

Beautifully written and passionately defended. This is the way to make a difference in how folks see beaver habitats. Look beyond the nuisance and see the wetland.

Here Endeth the Lesson.