Jan 06, 2026 Living with Beavers in America: Part 3
Introduction
In the previous two parts of this WellBeing International Beaver series (Part 1 and Part 2), we examined the history of human exploitation of beaver and their partial recovery, and noted that, as they return, beaver are increasingly coming to be viewed in a positive light. This attitude, however, can be counterbalanced by negative impressions made when beaver try to fit into a contemporary, human-dominated landscape that will never tolerate their return to their full potential. The human-beaver relationship will continue to revolve around how they are perceived, either as nuisances or beneficial environmental influences. This dynamic is explored in the final article of the series.
Framing beaver
Framing beaver does not mean accusing them of something they have not done, but rather applies a term often used by social scientists to represent how a concept or idea is perceived or interpreted by individuals or groups. Beaver can be framed as a commodity, recreational resource, ecosystem builder, flood control agent, landscape developer, nuisance/pest, or simply as other beings with intrinsic value. To most of us, they are a novelty, having been long absent and now making a reappearance.[1] Novelty can bring uncertainty, and much of the worry and belief that beaver and their activities will be harmful may simply derive from uncertainty. To some, beaver may represent a dilemma, to others a conundrum, and to still others an opportunity. Human-beaver conflicts occur on agricultural lands, private properties, suburban parks and the built urban environment – anywhere where there is flowing water. It is important to remember, however, that where beaver do appear, they are almost entirely restricted to the boundaries of the floodplain, boundaries that we humans ought to respect much more than we do. Human-beaver conflicts often require resolution, typically on terms dictated by humans. However, when resolving such conflicts, we should evaluate human desires against the contributions beaver make to the environment, and even consider beaver welfare.
Regulatory regimes
As game animals, beavers are regulated by state and federal wildlife agencies, entities established in part to prevent the overexploitation of wildlife while continuing to support traditional hunting and trapping practices. Beavers are subject to “harvest” during specific periods of the year, taken in numbers adjusted according to population estimates and the calculation of how many can be taken while maintaining a “standing crop” – a key concept in the sustained yield model of game management.[2] Out of season, beaver can be taken under damage permits when they are causing problems or even “threatening”[3] to do so. Regulations may also cover permitting the destruction of dams and lodges, as well as the use and placement of flood prevention structures. But flood prevention seems less universal than those regulating actual take. On private lands, taking beaver may or may not require a permit, while tribal lands typically exercise their own authority.
The conceptual basis for most beaver damage management is sustainable use, in which the harvest of surplus beaver by licensed furriers is held to be the most logical and economical way to deal with human-beaver conflicts.[4] For many North Americans, trapping is a time-honored enterprise regarded as part of a noble tradition traceable to the coureurs de bois and mountain men, with the model of wildlife as a sustainable resource representing an “unequivocal success story”.[5] The trapping of wild animals sometimes engages fierce debates over the humaneness of the methods,[6] as well as raising some fundamental questions about how and even whether population reduction can preventively remediate human-wildlife conflicts.[7] Trapping in cities and towns as a form of “nuisance” animal control is a growing phenomenon that creates its own moral dilemmas, too numerous to mention here. Finally, the growing evidence that beaver can perform valuable ecosystem services might give hope that regulators would begin to take such benefits into account when considering trapping and removals.
Conflicts
There are a finite number of ways in which humans and beaver enter into conflict, and a rapidly growing body of research, as well as applied practical experience, to address the ways in which conflict resolution can occur while leaving beaver in place. These reflect a shift underway in how the idea of conflict is framed, as the term “coexistence” is increasingly preferred by many when referring to human-animal relationships.[8] With beaver, two main types of conflict (or impediments to coexistence) predominate: the removal or killing of valued trees and the flooding of valued spaces.
The loss of trees, especially mature or specimen trees, along streams and on both private and public property, is typically viewed as a real concern. That the damage may be subjective is always at issue. Take the account of the “ravages” created by beaver felling trees along the Missouri River, related not in a contemporary study but in the journals of the Lewis and Clark expedition.[9] It is hard to argue that these ravages were an offense to anything but the senses of the observers. Today, where protection is mandated, a stiff wire cage can protect individual trees, provided the right type of wire[10] is used and, an appropriate installation process is followed.[11] Low, 3-foot fences may be slightly less effective but can serve when a large area has to be protected, as in the case of an aquatic pond with specimen water lilies, a preferred food of beaver. If the aesthetics of wire caging are viewed as a problem, some success has been reported using mixtures of coarse sand and latex paint (recipes can be found online) applied to tree trunks, color-matched to blend in with the surrounding environment. In the long run, coexistence might ideally mean protecting some trees and leaving others to the beaver, even to the point where it leads to there being only shrubby growth along streams that beaver repeatedly crop. This type of vegetation undoubtedly dominated streams occupied by beaver in the past and may provide a habitat more suitable for some rare species.[12]
Undoubtedly, the major cause of human-beaver conflicts is the flooding of open space when dams are built across streams, roads, and train tracks, or where culverts are blocked. Dam removal has traditionally been achieved through hard manual labor or by using machinery to disassemble larger dams. Unless beaver have been removed, they will return to work the night after removal, and the operation will eventually need to be repeated, a senseless and fruitless commitment of time and money. In more remote locations, dams can be blown apart by dynamite, to the delight of any curious children lucky enough to be around. Both “solutions” typically involve the sudden release of water downstream, with scouring and eventual deposition of sediment, something downstreamers may not appreciate.
Beaver are also legendary in their ability to persist in rebuilding breaches and dam removals. H. Raymond Gregg relates a typical account involving a struggle with beaver damming in a 1948 publication. He describes how a landowner thought to use an old beaver dam as part of a roadbed, which somehow motivated the local beaver colony to alter the site for their own purposes, leading to flooding of the new road. As Gregg relates, the landowner fought them for a “few summers, tearing out their work two or three times a week,” only to have them build back. That led to the landowner’s ingenious idea to put a corrugated pipe through the dam. This worked until the beaver plugged the pipe with a small pine. After that, daily cleaning was required as replacement pines were brought in every time one was removed. [13]
This use of corrugated piping represents an early account of the use of generically termed “flow devices.”[14] Vernon Bailey describes a pipe system in use as early as 1927[15], and there have undoubtedly been many experiments with this approach that went undocumented until a formal pedigree was conferred with the arrival of the Clemson Leveler[16] in the 1990s. This device had its own problems with plugging debris and is superseded now by the Beaver Deceiver™ and its variants, developed by the former biologist for the Penobscot Nation, Skip Lisle. Lisle is a forerunner of a growing cadre of specialists who combine knowledge of behavior and habits with innovative engineering solutions to resolve beaver conflicts, all while leaving beaver in place. He, along with Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions in Massachusetts, have pioneered the use and application of flow devices in the eastern United States.[17] However, the devices are now widely employed elsewhere as well. Successful installations depend heavily on an installer’s ability to ‘read’ each site and create a custom installation suitable for the topography and hydrology. ‘Deceiver’ technology offers the possibility that beaver can coexist with people, even in heavily developed environments.
Other conflicts
Beavers have also been framed as an invasive species when introduced into places where they did not occur naturally, and ironically, when introduced where they did, but as the wrong species. An example of the first case is found in the Fuegian archipelago, where the Argentine government imported beaver after the Second World War in an effort to stimulate a hoped-for fur industry.[18] Beavers are native to North America but not South America, having been held up somewhere around northern Mexico by impassible scrub and desert to the south. The Fuegian effort failed, and beaver escaped (or were released) to undergo explosive population growth, often typical of “invasions” by nonnative species. Today, beaver on the archipelago have been identified as a major threat to the ecosystem, leading Argentina and Chile to mount what is claimed to be the largest mammal eradication program ever attempted.[19] This means killing at a landscape scale and the removal of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of animals quickly enough that they do not just compensate for the loss reproductively – no small feat. Programs at this scale are quite problematic, and the area’s remoteness especially complicates this one. If unsuccessful, it will represent both a moral and an economic failure.
The second case involves the North American beaver (C. canadensis), introduced to Europe in the 1930s, where the native species (C. fiber) had been hunted and trapped nearly to the point of extinction. The two are recognized as distinct species, having diverged more than 7 million years ago. The two species no longer interbreed because of genomic differences.[20] Today, several European nations are launching efforts to repatriate their native species while suppressing their non-native cousins, worried, in part, that the North American species is more competitive and successful in occupying available habitats, and, in part, because canadensis is the “wrong” species. One can say that, but even specialists have trouble distinguishing between the two, and both seem to have a similar effect on their environment, except perhaps for a preference in the European beaver to live in bank burrows as opposed to lodges.[21] This raises several ethical issues and challenges us to be more forthcoming about the social as well as biological meanings of “invasive”, “nonnative”, and “exotic” species in these times.[22]
In yet another challenging case involving ethics and beaver, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CTDEEP) authorized in 1999 the lethal removal of beaver from Chester Creek, a tidal tributary of the Connecticut River. This was in response to what the agency identified as threats that impeded fish migration, interfered with the creek’s lunar flow, and, especially, posed a threat to a state-endangered plant, the Parker’s pipewort. Of concern also to conservationists, but not a state priority, were the impacts on a freshwater mussel, a fish (the sea lamprey), and other rare plants in the state that might suffer as a result of the altered hydrologic conditions. Perhaps overlooked is that all that rarity was likely caused by human development and occupancy of the habitat, which would have otherwise preserved species abundance. It certainly presents a conundrum for the bureaucracy mandated to protect rare, threatened and endangered species, and the case has called for deep debate over the moral questions involved as well as the development of best practices to ensure a balanced review of options. [23] That such reviews would be proposed at all seems to be a form of progress.
Perhaps the most challenging ecological context in which beaver are found today occurs in our urbanizing environments, cities and towns. Beaver have proven quite adaptable to these human-dominated environments, and as their numbers rise in urban communities, so do conflicts with humans. Problem-causing animals are often reflexively trapped and killed, initiating a recurring cycle that is attended to with about the same thoughtfulness one might give to mowing the lawn. However, the idea of using beaver as an “ecological design tool” is now on the table for some urban planners,[24] while others even see them as a nonhuman agency in urban wetland conservation and governance, helping promote the idea that even these places are always “more-than-human”.[25]
Looking ahead
As beaver return to contemporary landscapes, they are accompanied by both challenges and opportunities. Beaver can be the wrong species in the wrong place at the wrong time, depending on vagaries in how humans value them and their works. In an ideal world, we might be mortified to know that we design, build and develop with little to no concern for what nature advises. Instead, we stubbornly cling to the idea that we and our activities are exceptional and capable of overriding the forces of the natural world. The truth is that we can do that, but the fuse might be burning short on suffering the consequences. Why not try to engage cooperatively with the natural world? Enlisting the services of the beaver might be a good start to such an effort, as engaging them and their works could contribute to our well-being.
Video header credit: Schroptschop, iStock
[1] New York City is one of the most celebrated, where beaver had been absent for over 200 years. https://www.nyc.gov/site/wildlifenyc/animals/beavers.page
[2] Leopold, A. (1933). Game Management. New York, NY: Charles Scribner and Sons.
[3] The “threat to cause damage” clause can be found in regulations in many states, and for many wildlife advocates represent a frustratingly open invitation to wholescale destruction.
[4] E.g., Novak, M. (1987). Beaver. In M. Novak, J. A. Baker, M. E. Obbard, & B. M. (eds), Wild Furbearer Management and Conservation in North America (pp. 282–313). Ontario, Canada: Ministry of Natural Resources.
[5] Organ, J. F., Gotie, R. F., Decker, T. A., & Batcheller, G. R. (1998). A Case Study in the Sustained Use of Wildlife: The Management of Beaver in the Northeastern United States. Pp. 125-139, In: Van der Linde, H. & M. Danskin (eds.), Enhancing Sustainability: Resources for Our Future, ICUN: Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK.
[6] E.g., Ludders, J. W., Schmidt, R. H., Dein, F. J., & Klein, P. N. (1999). Drowning is not euthanasia. Wildlife Society Bulletin, 27, 666–670.
[7] The underlying precepts of wildlife damage control are currently being scrutinized and even questioned through the emerging scientific disciple of applied ecology. (See, for example, Hone, J. 1996. Analysis of vertebrate pest research. Proceedings the 17th Vertebrate Pest Conference, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0gf6s3hr
[8] E.g., Madden, F. (2004). Creating Coexistence between Humans and Wildlife: Global Perspectives on Local Efforts to Address Human–Wildlife Conflict. Human Dimensions of Wildlife, 9(4), 247–257. doi:10.1080/10871200490505675
[9] Related in: Goodrich, S. G. (1872). Johnson’s Natural History (Vol. I). New York: A, J, Johnson.
[10] Westbrook, C. J., & England, K. (2022). Relative effectiveness of four different guards in preventing beaver cutting of urban trees. Environmental Management, 70(1), 97–104.
[11] Pollock, M. M., Lewallen, G. M., Woodruff, K., Jordan, C. E., & Castro, J. M. (Eds.). (2017). The Beaver Restoration Guidebook: Working with beaver to restore streams, wetlands and floodplains. Portland, OR: United States Fish and Wildlife Service. https://www/fws.gov/oregonfwo/promo.cfm?id=177175812
[12] See Longcore, T., Rich, C., & Müller-Schwarze, D. (2007). Management by assertion: beavers and songbirds at Lake Skinner (Riverside County, California). Environmental Management, 39, 460–471 for an interesting case history and discussion.
[13] Gregg, H. R. (1948). The magnificent rodent. The Scientific Monthly, 67(2), 73–82.
[14] A term coined by Skip Lisle.
[15] Bailey, V. (1927). Beaver habits and experiments in beaver culture. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Technical Bulletin No. 21, pp. 1-38.
[16] https://dnr.sc.gov/wildlife/publications/pdf/ClemsonBeaverPondLeveler.pdf
[17] Lisle’s business can be found at https://beaverdeceivers.com/ and Callahan’s at https://www.beaversolutions.com/. Callahan is also the founder the Beaver Institute (https://www,beaverinstitute,org), a nonprofit dedicated to promoting and sharing knowledge about beaver.
[18] Paralleling a number of similar efforts, including the introduction of nutria to the United States. The extent of ecological damage and impacts to pre-existing biotic communities has only begun to be calculated.
[19] Jusim, P., Goijman, A. P., & Schiavini, A. (2025). A leap in scale for invasive species management: a medium-scale beaver eradication pilot project. The Journal of Wildlife Management, 89(3), e22706. https://doi.org/10.1002/jwmg.22706
[20] Horn, S., Durka, W., Wolf, R., Ermala, A., Stubbe, A., Stubbe, M., & Hofreiter, M. (2011). Mitochondrial genomes reveal slow rates of molecular evolution and the timing of speciation in beavers (Castor), one of the largest rodent species. PLoS One, 6(1), e14622. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0014622
[21] Perhaps because of the 400,000 years in which they are documented to have been preyed on by hominins?
[22] Laura Ogden captures this as framing issue by characterizing the introduction of beaver to the Fuegian peninsula as a “diaspora”, noting in part that sheep are also nonnative but are not looked at in that way, but as the “central organizing principle on the pampas.”
Ogden, L. A. (2018). The Beaver Diaspora: A Thought Experiment. Environmental Humanities, 10(1), 63–85.
[23] Dirrigl Jr, F. J., Rolston III, H., & Wilson, J. H. (2021). Scientific and ethical considerations in rare species protection: the case of beavers in Connecticut. Ethics & the Environment, 26(1), 121–140.
[24] Bailey, D. R., Dittbrenner, B. J., & Yocom, K. P. (2019). Reintegrating the North American beaver (Castor canadensis) in the urban landscape. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water, 6(1), e1323. Retrieved from https://doi.org/1002/wat2.1323
[25] McCrea, G. (2016). Castor canadensis and urban wetland governance: Fairfax County, VA case study. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 19, 306–314.