Well, maybe thinking once would be an improvement. Yesterday’s outrageous burst of lying was fun, but Ben Goldfarb and I agree we’ve seen worse from the actual news in our day. Just this morning I got an email from Rocklin where they are planning to rip out a beaver dam and the report to CDFW said this:

Types of materials to be removed, displaced, or added: Remove sediment from Beaver Dams Evasive trees Tully’s Evasive Plants Pompous Grass

God I hate that pomous grass. It’s soo full of itself! And the evasive trees are so hard to corner! Always changing the subject and growing in the opposite direction!

Ignorance abounds. Apparently it is a renewable resource. Just look at Wisconsin where they are spending many dollars to restore streams for trout and getting rid of any beaver that horns his way into the conversation. At least things are getting controversial.

Wisconsin wildlife officials say controlling the state’s beaver population is key to healthy trout streams. But some conservation advocates are pushing back.

Wisconsin is home to more than 13,000 miles of trout streams. Every year, the state Department of Natural Resources works on habitat restoration projects to help trout populations thrive, both on public lands and on private property where the state has an easement to allow fishing access.

Wildlife officials say part of this work involves keeping another native species from undoing their efforts: the beaver. But some conservationists are pushing back on the idea that beavers are a threat to trout populations.

David Rowe is head of the DNR’s fisheries team in southwestern Wisconsin. He said beavers are a part of the native wildlife along these waterways, but the work his team does to create the ideal habitat for trout often attracts beavers to the area.

He said the rodents love the shrubby plants like willow and box elder that grow along the streams and the rocks used to stabilize the banks are an ideal foundation.

“It looks very attractive to a beaver to lock his dam in with a hard spot and his dam will persist longer. So the beavers you know that are going up and down these streams are like, ‘Oh, wait a second. This is a great place now to build a dam now,'” Rowe said. “So we do make it more attractive for them.”

“There’s an expectation with the landowner that if a beaver shows up on these places that we fixed up … and now starts flooding out their cornfield, starts flooding out their pasture, starts flooding out their driveway, we have to manage that beaver,” Rowe said. “We don’t want to create a situation where we invite a beaver in and now there’s a giant pond on their property instead of a trout stream.”

He said the DNR mostly does beaver culling on a case-by-case basis, but officials do some surveillance for problems in areas that have seen repeated beaver damage.

He said a beaver building a dam can undo the DNR’s habitat work on a stream, which is paid for through the $10 trout stamps purchased by Wisconsin anglers.

He said a beaver building a dam can undo the DNR’s habitat work on a stream, which is paid for through the $10 trout stamps purchased by Wisconsin anglers.

Hey how many beaver stamps do you have to sell to get a beaver to do the same work? Um, that would be none. The nice thing is that when you read a horrific report like this at LEAST you are getting some push back. That never used to happen.

But as the state sees more frequent heavy rainfalls and resulting flooding due to climate change, some conservationists say the practice of culling beavers is harming trout streams and the surrounding area.

Bob Boucher studies beavers and how they affect hydrology and is the founder of Milwaukee Riverkeeper, an environmental advocacy group focused on the Milwaukee River basin. He said wildlife officials started culling beavers based on faulty science that beaver dams block fish migration and cause harmful warming of waters in trout streams.

“Actually what they do is they stabilize stream temperatures to be cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter,” Boucher said. “When you stabilize the thermal climate stream, you also have more productivity from it because there’s more bugs being grown.”

He said those insects are key to helping trout populations thrive. So while fish may prefer to live in cooler sections of the water, they need the warmer parts for food.

Beyond trout populations, Boucher said beavers’ dams reconnect rivers and streams to their natural floodplain. In the last two decades, Wisconsin has seen a growing number of severe storms with heavy rainfall that led to flash floods, especially in northern and southwestern Wisconsin. Boucher said allowing beavers to make their dams on these waterways would help waterways better manage the influx of water and keep it from rushing through the system.

He said wildlife officials are also killing otters on these waterways because they continue to use lethal traps for beavers. The USDA Wild Services accidentally killed 146 otters last year as part of beaver removal efforts.

“They could go to non-lethal techniques by using flow devices and things like that,” Boucher said. “The (state) Department of Natural Resources is really damaging the wildlife of Wisconsin and I would say the waters of the United States by doing this.”

Rowe said the DNR recognizes the need for more research to better understand the actual impact of beaver dams on local trout populations.

He said the department has a research scientist currently working on this topic. He also said the DNR has worked to improve their habitat restoration process so that they don’t accidentally attract beavers to an area that will later have to be removed. And he said the agency tries to reconnect trout streams to the natural floodplain in every habitat process because it has been shown to help the projects be more successful and long-lasting.

I’m so old that I remember when you’d read an article like this and the benefits of beaver dams wouldn’t even come up. It would just be BLOW THEM UP all the way. Now with Bob Boucher on the case we are really starting to see some changes. Nothing happens over night. But read through the comment section. Attitudes are shirting in the right direction.

Just remember what Gandhi said: