Ever Fed Wood To A Beaver?

[lockhaven]

I still like beavers

 

[dave1949]

As for the pools that they make attracting dragon flies....well I think you might be missing piece of that eco-system puzzle. The pools attract and breed mosquitoes. The mosquitoes attract the dragon flies. The dragon flies cannot make a sizeable dent in the mosquitoes. Therefore: beavers = mosquitoes.

My experience is different than yours. After the dragonflies come out, the mosquito population plummets.

Yes, mosquitoes breed in water, and they find plenty of places to breed with or without a beaver pool. Dragonflies need quiet water with emerging stems - like found in a beaver pond. On balance, the dragonflies overcome the mosquitoes, at least here that is the case.

Dragonflies are good to have around. Their only downside is they will eat honey bees apparently. The larva/nymph stage can last up to four years and while in that stage, they are voracious eaters of other water-dwelling insect nymphs.
http://www.dragonfly-site.com/dragonfly-life-cycle.html

Sorry you have so many problems with beavers and vice versa :laughing: I firmly believe leaving a little space for nature is a necessity, sometimes that will cost something. If everyone who owns land controls every square foot of it, we will turn the earth into one big farm basically.

I think the conflict is clear, landowners don't want to carry the cost of providing natural habitats for everyone else. That applies to more than just beaver habitat. No easy solutions to that, and certainly no cheap solutions.

Take your situation, no one is willing to step in and compensate you for your timber losses if you allow the beavers to destroy the trees. Nobody compensates me for raising deer & turkey for the state of Maine either. I don't even get to hunt them for free in season. I think as more land is used due to higher populations, thinking will change about those things over time. Already, some states are considering 'takings' laws providing compensation in cases where restrictions are placed on land use.

Dave.

 

[zzvyb6]

Quite a few times, actually. But, that was in my younger daze !!:laughing:

 

[studor]

+1 on the "its another rodent pest" side.
If I was going to feed them wood it would be a stake!
On my property which has a small river in its center I have been encouraged by everyone from foresters to game wardens to keep the beaver in check. If not for trapping and shooting, the watercourse would not have a tree within two hundred yards of it! Even SWMBO gets annoyed when they cruise our pond looking to set up shop. Giardia, dead trees, flooded areas, spring washouts, higher taxes (from taking out dams and repairing roads) -- yep they are just naturally lovable creatures!
PS -- the reason we put them on our money was because of their former commercial value, not because we have some great affinity for them

 

[dave1949]

+1 on the "its another rodent pest" side.
If I was going to feed them wood it would be a stake!
On my property which has a small river in its center I have been encouraged by everyone from foresters to game wardens to keep the beaver in check. If not for trapping and shooting, the watercourse would not have a tree within two hundred yards of it! Even SWMBO gets annoyed when they cruise our pond looking to set up shop. Giardia, dead trees, flooded areas, spring washouts, higher taxes (from taking out dams and repairing roads) -- yep they are just naturally lovable creatures!
PS -- the reason we put them on our money was because of their former commercial value, not because we have some great affinity for them

Another beaver hater :laughing:

I can't imagine how anything survived before people were around to reduce beaver populations.

Of course beavers can make problems for man-made structures and human endeavors, no one is denying that. They also produce a lot benefits to humans in the larger scheme of things. Grasslands next to a river and dead trees are necessary parts of a diverse ecosystem. It's about balance, eh?

If everyone completely tames and controls nature in their immediate surroundings, and people spread over more and more areas that used to be uninhabited, the result is predictable. That is what is taking place now around the globe more or less on autopilot. By necessity, everyone focuses on their own immediate resources while very few focus on the over all result of that.

Except for national parks or the like, there are limited mechanisms working to preserve habitats. There are a growing number of people who sell or gift their land's development rights to organizations dedicated to preserving wild habitats, but obviously that takes a certain level of personal wealth to be affordable.

At some point, if there is to be enough wild habitat to sustain biodiversity, some people will have to voluntarily forego personal income, or, methods will be developed to compensate those who are willing to put preservation first. It is already a problem in our lifetimes and will be a growing problem for our children and grandchildren. When will we ever be smart enough to use our own intelligence?

I checked the branches I put in the pool for the beavers. They haven't eaten from them in the past 36 hours but did leave behind a couple of switches from their own efforts.
Dave.

 

[jonyyuma]

Artesian water is really a touchy subject.We have had tests come back bad, Ark has several nice sites to use for water,free-flowing and cold. Bat guana is in some of them, systems must be tested for the public to use, there will be a sign nearby.. If I ever drink anymore of it, I'm not quessing, it will have a Clearwater tablet in it...My canteen has a pouch for them...

 

[studor]

I can't imagine how anything survived before people were around to reduce beaver populations.

It must have been those wolves that you have -- oh don't have them any more? Please don't preach balance and conservation to me. I maintain 1/3 of my property as wetlands and the other two thirds as managed forest. An area overpopulated with beaver will solve the population problem by itself -- they will eat themselves out of house and home -- literally. Once we removed the natural predators the beaver were still kept in check by trapping when it was ok to have a beaver coat. When the greenies thought that was disgusting, people stopped buying and the price dropped too low to make it worthwhile. Hence too many beavers -- kinda like Canada geese and people!
Come back and talk to me when trees you have been nurturing for 10 years to replace indiscriminate cutting are girdled by a beaver in one night, or you cannot get to your property for a week because the beaver built a dam in a culvert and created a twelve foot deep ditch in the spring --Or you catch giardia trying to remove enough dam to stop areas from being flooded. Why don't you just leave bunches of McDs' fries on your lawn so you can watch the pretty seagulls :laughing::laughing:

 

[dave1949]

It must have been those wolves that you have -- oh don't have them any more? Please don't preach balance and conservation to me. I maintain 1/3 of my property as wetlands and the other two thirds as managed forest. An area overpopulated with beaver will solve the population problem by itself -- they will eat themselves out of house and home -- literally. Once we removed the natural predators the beaver were still kept in check by trapping when it was ok to have a beaver coat. When the greenies thought that was disgusting, people stopped buying and the price dropped too low to make it worthwhile. Hence too many beavers -- kinda like Canada geese and people!
Come back and talk to me when trees you have been nurturing for 10 years to replace indiscriminate cutting are girdled by a beaver in one night, or you cannot get to your property for a week because the beaver built a dam in a culvert and created a twelve foot deep ditch in the spring --Or you catch giardia trying to remove enough dam to stop areas from being flooded. Why don't you just leave bunches of McDs' fries on your lawn so you can watch the pretty seagulls :laughing::laughing:

You picked your battle ground, not the beavers. If you wish to nurture trees in an area heavy with beavers, that's your choice. If it were me, I would expect some problems. There are beaver defeater culvert protectors which you could chose to use that would be cheaper and easier than repairing a road, healing from giardia and the like.

Apparently, the beavers didn't get the memo on your land use plans. :laughing:

I am curious as to whether the beavers will use wood they don't collect themselves. I am seeing if there is something to learn, that's all. It sounds like the beavers are winning in your case, so maybe there is something worth learning about your opponent.

Dragging the wolves, flying carp, fur coats and PETA into it is neither here nor there. The situation today is what it is, and it is what we made it. The question should be, what will we make in the future?

It is time to figure out how our desires and needs can accommodate and preserve diverse wildlife habitats. I cannot speak of that without providing my reasoning as to why it is necessary, that is hardly 'preaching'. You are making conscious choices to preserve habitat, I assume you agree it is necessary.

My point is that you are 'down in the trenches' on your land, trying to do the right thing in a hard place to do it. There may be better approaches to that problem. I hope there are, because we are not pursuing a winning strategy now. In fact, we really don't have a strategy, it is just 'happening' as a result of millions of individual choices made for the benefit of an individual on relatively small patches of land. That is not a systemic understanding of the issue.

BTW, the seagull population along the Maine coast is now declining due to predation by bald eagles since their numbers have recovered.
Dave.

 

[lockhaven]

I guess it is where you are that makes your opinions on wildlife.
A lot of those on the coasts think wolfs in the rocky mountains and northern state are a good thing, those ranchers living there disagree
Some think mute swans are so beautiful they should be protected those that appreciate shore birds disagree
White tail deer when I was a young lad were a sight most wanted to see now around here they are a pest eating everything in sight.
At my Maryland home if a wondering black bear is sighted the police respond along with the news people calling the DNR to trap it and return it to its "home" at my Pennsylvania home we hardly even take notice till one comes up on the porch
so you see beavers in certain areas are considered pests and vermin in others they are a pleasure to have around.
My most hated wildlife is grey squirrels I kill them at every opportunity by any means at my disposal. (they chewed my house and my truck)
I LIKE BEAVERS

 

[N80]

The problem here is that too many people try to see nature as something separate from us and something that is good and perfect when left alone. Both of these notions are silly when you get down to it.

We are part of nature and even when we are removed from the process nature can be brutal, ugly, and wasteful.

Someone might argue that "brutal, ugly and wasteful" are subjective human perspectives regarding nature. They are correct, but we cannot look at nature in any other way. We are humans. We can think (not that we all do, but we can). And we make value judgements. There is nothing wrong with that.

We stomp on a roach or poison millions of ants, but we are horrified when someone clubs a creature with soft fur and big eyes. We protect whales but we eat giant cod fish by the train load. We protect redwoods but plant and harvest pines.

All of these are value judgements and making them is not wrong or unnatural.

In this regard, we can see things in nature that are abhorrent and wasteful. Claiming that every aspect of nature is somehow good and beautiful is more of a religious viewpoint than a logical one.

In that regard, it is easy and quite logical to see beavers as among the most wasteful creatures on the planet. It does not make them evil, but their moral innocence doesn't make what they do any more okay.

If I value trees and moving water and proper watershed and clean water it will be all too obvious to anyone that the beaver does immense harm to these valued things. And they do it for no other reason except that they are genetically programmed to do so. Beavers do not need large expanses of still water to survive and procreate. They do not need to kill whole stands of trees for the 6 inches of bark they eat from them.

And this value judgement is warranted. From our perspective, which is the only perspective we have, what is the value of a den full of beavers compared to an entire hardwood draw of massive 100+ year old trees (and all their benefits to an eco-system) killed for no reason other than innate habit?

Bottom line: It is okay for people to love beavers. It is just as okay for people to wish them removed, by whatever means, from any property they have a desire to protect.

One might claim that all I'm protecting is my vision of what a natural place should look and be like....and that is exactly right. But so are they.