Beavers have been making headlines recently, not always for the best reasons. This summer, officials with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation responded to encounters with rabid beavers.
Lower Hudson Valley Bureau Chief spoke with DEC wildlife biologist Mandy Wilson to learn more.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Editor's note: This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Guerra: There's been some discussion about rabid beavers in the Adirondacks, including a rabid beaver found near Lake George. How did that case end up on the DEC's radar, and what can you tell me about rabid beavers?
Wilson: The Lake George situation was a pretty interesting one. We don't hear very much about rabid beavers. It's not a common occurrence at all. It was definitely an interesting situation when it came up.
Essentially, what happened is that there were a couple of folks that were camping on an island in Lake George, and they were attacked by a young beaver that ended up being rabid.
They called 911, and the local police department got involved. Our environmental conservation officers also got looped into that response and helped respond to that. I did look back through the New York Health Department, some of their data about how many rabid beavers there have been over the past couple of decades, and it's very uncommon. One every four to five years may test positive for rabies.
Guerra: It seems like people are seeing a lot of beavers, but how does that compare historically to where beavers used to be?
Wilson: It's interesting because it's very dependent on the range of beavers.
Beavers used to be found throughout the United States and Canada. They were a huge focus of the fur trade. New York was basically founded because of beavers and the beaver fur trade. They were trapped essentially out of New York, and then there was a very small population left. People brought beavers into New York from out west, starting in the late 1800s, early 1900s, and the beavers have really done great since then.
They they are a protected furbearer species, so there is a trapping season for them. But it's a limited trapping season. We have limits. It's very well regulated. And overall, our beavers in New York and throughout most of the eastern part of the country are are doing very well. It's probably not as many as historically there used to be. But as far as the amount of habitat that there is, since obviously the environment, the amount of habitat has changed dramatically just due to people. Beavers have really saturated most of the habitat that's there.
Guerra: What role do beavers play in creating wetlands that are very unique ecosystems?
Wilson: Beavers are a really cool species because they are just this animal that can completely alter the environment around them, which is is not very common. They can have this dramatic effect. They can basically go into this area might just be a small stream, build a dam, and then it creates this pond and this associated wetland with the pond, and that completely changes the water temperature. The water flow can change the amount of groundwater. It changes the vegetation structure. It provides this really important habitat for a lot of different species. We have a lot of amphibians that do really well in beaver ponds, we have a lot of bird species, waterfowl. Wetlands are a very important habitat for a large number of different species.
Guerra: A lot of people are familiar with beavers because of the flooding that they cause, or sometimes when their dams break, that ends up causing flooding. What should the public know about living with beavers, if they have beavers on their property, and what coexisting with a beaver can look like.
Wilson: We always recommend trying to coexist with beavers as much as you can. There are a couple of different options.
There are two main concerns from having beavers in your vicinity. The first one would be the fact that they are feeding on trees, so they feed on the inner layer of bark as well as aquatic vegetation, and they also use trees to build their dams and their lodges. They can take down a lot of trees in an area. They tend to not travel super far from the water, but within that area around the water, they can they can do a number to the trees.
There are steps that landowners can take. They can put mesh wire around the trees to prevent beavers from actually being able to get in. To cut down the trees, essentially they tend to be food limited, so they'll be in an area until they no longer have food within a certain radius of the pond, and then they move on to a new area.
The other big issue that everyone knows about is flooding, and that can be a pretty significant issue depending on where the dam is located.
There are different options for landowners who are experiencing flooding, and we would encourage coexistence whenever possible.
Beaver deceivers are a water level control device. The idea is essentially trying to outsmart a beaver, which is surprisingly difficult. They're very smart, especially at just figuring out where water is going and how to stop water from flowing.
If there are beavers that are plugging up a culvert that goes to a road, and you're concerned about road flooding, it would be kind of putting in a fence around the culvert, and then putting a tube that runs from right in front of the culvert to farther back, and then putting another fence around that.
Beavers think that they can still plug the culvert, they'll plug the fence around the culvert, but the water's actually coming from farther back into the pond.
If that doesn't work, it can be difficult. It depends on what the landscape looks like.
You can actually remove beavers with lethal removal, which is going to be the best way. We don't relocate beavers. They've essentially saturated the available habitat. What would tend to happen is you take the problem in one area and then move the problem somewhere else.
We do not allow for the relocation of beavers in New York. But you can hire a nuisance wildlife control operator to come and remove the beaver - to trap the beaver.
We're happy to set folks up if who are experiencing these issues with licensed trappers who could come out during the actual trapping season and remove the beaver. That's a good way to ensure that the animal is being used fully.
