This commentary is by Rohit Sharma, a resident of Roxbury.
Mr. D’Amico’s recent letter contains two glaring falsehoods. He claims that “beavers were nearly eliminated in Vermont in the 1800s due to deforestation of farmland as the state was being settled.” What he conveniently omits is that a primary cause of beavers being exterminated was trapping, not deforestation.
The rest of Mr. D’Amico’s feeble argument rests on rudimentary math to supposedly show that an increase in water upstream results in a corresponding increase downstream, and therefore beaver dams serve no purpose during a flooding event.
He does not take beaver ecology into account. He assumes, falsely, that a river system with manmade dams is entirely comparable to a river system with beaver dams and beaver meadows.
Two key researchers — Bob Boucher, who studied the Milwaukee River watershed, and Denise Burchsted, who has studied river systems in the Northeast — and other researchers like Glynnis Hood from the University of Alberta have shown that river systems with beaver dams and beaver meadows vastly increase their water storage capacity, by as much as up to nine times, compared to river systems where there are no beaver dams and beaver meadows.
This remarkable water storage capacity of beaver meadows, which Boucher’s 2021 study shows to be 100 times cheaper than any engineering project, works both against flooding (by storing vast amounts of water that would otherwise flow downstream) and against drought (by making stored water available to that ecosystem in times of scarcity). In fact, the Bureau of Land Management is trying to attract beavers back in at least 10 states, as reported in The New York Times:
“Beavers, you might say, are having a moment. In Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming, the Bureau of Land Management is working with partners to build beaver-like dams that they hope real beavers will claim and expand. In California, the new state budget designates about $1.5 million a year to restoring the animals for climate resiliency and biodiversity benefits.”
If we want to build a more resilient community and ecosystem, we should be encouraging beaver habitats, not trapping and killing beavers.
It makes no economic sense either to trap beavers. In a study conducted between 2004 and 2007, and published in 2008-29, Boyles and Savitzky concluded that installing flow devices and NOT trapping was the most efficacious and economic way to deal with chronic beaver damage. “The costs to install and maintain flow devices were significantly lower than preventative road maintenance, damage repairs, and/or population control costs at these sites prior to flow device installations.” (Boyles and Savitzky study)
It makes no scientific sense to continue to trap beavers. It makes no ethical or moral sense to keep doing so. And it makes no economic sense to keep trapping beavers.
I urge all readers of the Digger to listen to our very own Vermont Edition on beavers or the Science Friday episode on beavers, in case they missed either or both of them. Also published just this past December is Leila Philip’s remarkable book “Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America.”
Happy listening and happy reading!
