Each year, the state of Mississippi and as many as 70 of the state’s 82 counties provide funds for beaver control, money used by the USDA Wildlife Services uses to control the beaver population and destroy the dams they build.
Left to their own devices, beavers could have a crippling effect on the state’s timber industry and agriculture. Roads and highways could be flooded as a result of the beavers’ dam-building efforts.
They are seen, quite justifiably, as a nuisance anywhere people live and work.
Even so, there remains a grudging respect and admiration for the beaver.
As humorist James Thurber once noted, “One has but to observe a community of beavers at work in a stream to understand the loss in his sagacity, balance, cooperation, competence and purpose which Man has suffered since he rose up on his hind legs.”
Those who know beavers best, the USDA agents assigned to control the beaver population, find the beaver to be ingenious in the manner in which they construct their dams, the materials they use and their ability to use the natural flow of the river, creek or stream to create the habitat that best suits them.
As it is with most animals, beavers are not a nuisance until people start moving into their habitat.
Beavers simply have no respect for real estate values or commercial forestry and agriculture. So that’s a problem.
Even so, it would be foolish to dismiss the beaver as simply a nuisance. In many respects, the work they do is not simply an impressive feat of engineering, but of ecology as well.
The flooding that is the result of their dam-building creates wetlands and sustains an ecosystem that might otherwise disappear forever.
Every so often, man-made projects are challenged by concerns over the environment. We have all heard stories of how a project had to be stopped or altered in order to save a certain obscure species of fish or frog or other animal. We are sometimes tempted to scoff and blame environmentalists for obstructing progress.
But it should be noted that it’s not simply a matter of protecting some rare, seemingly insignificant species; it’s about saving an entire ecosystem of which that species plays a vital role.
Beavers are the first landscape architects. The work they do is important in preserving the natural world we are sometimes inclined to take for granted.
Studies even suggest that beavers play a role in combating climate change. A new study from Colorado State University geology professor Ellen Wohl finds that these beaver meadows store carbon, temporarily sequestering greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Wohl found that the abandoned beaver dams she studied made up around 8 percent of the carbon storage in the landscape, and that if beavers were still actively maintaining those dams, the number would be closer to 23 percent.
While beaver control is a necessity where people live, play and work, we shouldn’t ignore the important work they can do in preserving our natural ecosystems.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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