/Co-existing with Beaver

Co-existing with Beaver

From Shaman’s Rock

By Jim Poling Sr.

Those critters with the sharp buck teeth and hard flat tails are back and making their presence known.

Beaver numbers were reported down in parts of the province a few years back, likely because of disease or water conditions. Looking around our county this year, they seem to have made a big comeback.

After a low snow winter and early spring drought, the beaver environment outlook was not looking good. Then, above average rainfalls in April and early May changed that, filling ditches and washing out roads in several areas.

The beaver now have all the water they need. You can see their dams and lodges in flooded areas along the sides of some roads.

Road crews have been busy breaking roadside beaver dams to prevent road flooding. They also have been unplugging culverts stuffed with branches and logs by busy beavers eager to create new ponds.

Beaver and we humans are among the only mammals who create and alter our environments to suit our needs.  Beaver like to create their own ponds because they cannot live in water that runs rapidly, is shallow or polluted.

Their environment sometimes clashes with ours, however. Their work kills or damages trees, blocks watercourses and causes excessive flooding – all of which can create problems for us.

We often try to solve the problems by destroying beaver habitats and the beaver themselves. When we do, we ignore how much good beaver do for the overall environment.

The trees they cut open the forest canopy, letting in light that helps to grow smaller plants that support insects, birds and other wildlife. Beaver ponds create deeper water for fish and good environments for frogs, turtles, mink and muskrat.

Waterfowl also move into pond areas made more diverse by beaver. These become safe areas for nesting and raising chicks. Black ducks are said to depend on beaver ponds for 86 per cent of their nesting habitat.

Beaver are a keystone species providing biodiversity important to our world. We need them and must find ways of living with each other in spite of how our environments sometimes clash.

Canadians do a fairly good job of co-existing with beaver. We should because they are Canada’s national symbol, having contributed much to the building of the country we have today.

Europeans settled Canada in hopes of getting rich from beaver fur.

Back in the early 1600s there were no umbrellas or waterproof clothes so European beaver were trapped for their fur, which is long, coarse and waterproofed with oils from their bodies. Beaver hats, soft yet waterproof, became wildly popular.

Beaver were trapped to extinction in parts of Europe so the hunt moved to Canada which had an estimated beaver population of 400 million. That figure did not stand for long. Hudson Bay Company’s records show that more than 4.7 million Canadian beaver pelts reached British auction houses between 1769 and 1868. And these figures don’t include pelts judged sub-standard and discarded.

 By the late1800s Ontario beaver had been trapped to near extinction.

Beaver populations now are reasonably well protected by government hunting and trapping regulations. But some landowners consider them damaging pests and are allowed to eliminate them and their habitat when damage can be proven.

Killing or relocating the animals and destroying their dams and lodges seldom has provided long-term solutions to beaver problems. New beaver move in and begin rebuilding.

They have been doing that for millions of years. In fact, ancestors of modern beaver were creating dams and building homes long before humans arrived and began changing things to suit themselves

Today there are organized groups that encourage human-beaver co-existence as an important part of any beaver management plans. They say installing protective culvert cones and pond leveling systems, plus wrapping tree lower areas with wire, are some ways of allowing beaver to exist without creating property damage.

Glynnis Hood, Alberta environmental biology and ecology professor, writes in her book The Beaver Manifesto:

“We need water, and where there’s beavers, there’s water. Beavers help to recharge groundwater by creating these flooded areas, which then increase groundwater supply. They also dramatically increase surface water supply; and some studies show that the wetlands they help create mitigate forest fires.”