Restoring Beavers by Plane and Automobile
I drop the tailgate and eagerly lean the top half of my body toward the bed. I followed this truck for two hours watching two dog crates bounce in the back, but dogs aren’t in the cages. Beavers are. It’s moving day and these two beavers have a new home to build in Idaho’s backcountry.
“Beavers are really nature’s engineers and they do a really good job at what they do,” says James Brower, Idaho Department of Fish and Game volunteer services coordinator. “We love beaver and we love what beaver do.”
But until recently, the same department now moving beaver, was issuing kill permits to eliminate nuisance dam builders. Beavers hear water running and they run to stop it. They also chew, flooding roads with trees toppled by their teeth. Roads close when under water and those trees might be your windbreak.
“Usually we would solve the problem by issuing a kill permit to the land owner. Instead, we’re now trying to work with landowners,” Brower says. “It’s more preferable for us to move that beaver live and have it do its job somewhere else where it’s not causing a problem.”
Through the caged front of the crate, the jostled animals are alert with eyes wide. They’re two of 19 moved in one summer. Traveling by truck is foreign for all of them, but mild compared to the transplant tactics of the 1950s when Idaho’s wildlife biologists dropped beaver in the backcountry via plane and parachute.
“It’s crazy, right? It’s not something people do on a normal basis,” Brower says. “I would have loved to have been a part of that.”
Old footage of the operation is worth seeing and hearing. Narrator with classic, stern voice delivers scripted lines….
