Beaver Fever

Fish Sticks

Fish Sticks

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Central PA
Given all the benefits to streams and wetland ecosystems from beaver is there any laws stopping someone from rearing them and releasing them on public land similarly to hatchery trout? I looked on game comission website and after doing some digging all the info talked about relocating them not reintroducing. I will probably just call the game comission but was wondering if anyone had information about releasing these ecosystem engineers
 
Yes, it would be unlawful. You might be able to possess one with a permit (can't really think of a permit that would allow it, but it's possible), but releasing them would be unlawful. You might contact your local game warden and ask if they need areas to release nuisance beavers, but to be honest, it's not been my experience that beavers stay where they've been relocated anyway.
 
IMHO what is constraining beaver populations in PA is too high levels of harvest. Simply reducing harvest levels would probably lead to higher populations. And they re-distribute themselves when populations get high in a particular area. I doubt that live trapping and re-location is even necessary, but might be an option in some areas.

Rearing them would be totally unnecessary. They raise themselves.
 
I agree that they're very good at relocating themselves, particularly the youngsters that get booted out, but disagree that harvest is too high. The limits are ridiculous, but with fur prices basically non-existent, I don't think people are getting carried away trapping beavers at all. I think our harvest in the '90s was likely a good bit higher than it is today (although admittedly, there were a LOT of beavers around then).
 
They are not always beneficial. Back in the early '80s, little Canoe Creek in Blair Co. was being considered for inclusion as a wild trout stream. The PGC chose to release beavers in the area of the creek known as the 'beaver dams.' Their dams backed things up and eventually created a swamp where the stream left its bed for a mile in a meadow, which warmed the stream dramatically. Below this beaver meadow, the water was much too warm to sustain wild trout, but it did attract pickerel from the DCNR lake downstream. Canoe Creek is now a popular early season stocked trout destination.

Be careful. Beavers do not always positively influence ecosystems.
 
Up here in northwest Pennsylvania beavers are nuisance creating wetlands where they are not wanted and road problems where culverts go under roads. Dynamite sometimes has to be used to remove their dams and they are almost impossible to relocate. There are a lot of streams that are warmed by them with no ST below the dams.
 
I know a brook trout stream that has pickerel in it and the brook trout and pickerel have been both present there for years. There is a ‘mostly treeless probably 20-30 acre beaver impoundment upstream of it. It is a freestoner but I have seen more downstream plant growth than in any other freetoner. I assume this plant growth is from Increased ground water recharge because the ground surrounding the stream the rest of the way down is soupy and i see try same kind of plant growth on clarks, a tailwater that simulates ground water to an extent. Immediately downstream of the dam it my or may not be warmer,not sure. But there is brook trout right there. But just a but down when the gradient semi flattens it gets very soupy and plants grow in stream. It may be colder down there than above beaver dam, i should check. Silverfox just surveyed a brook trout stream with beaver dams full of brook trout. Benefits include possibly selective passage for native fish, groundwater recharge and dense tree growth in. Beaver meadow, much lower chance of stream drying up im drought which would have been huge this past 3 years. There is alot to like about what they do. I am sure there are some special situations based on geology, topography and stream that it may be a draw or even harmful but based on what I have read it seems like we need more of these things. Honestly if you have one of these freestoners invasive browns have kicked brook trout out of ya got nothing to lose as long as no other native species that are threatened or endangered in. Like someone above pointed out above maybe you wind up with something cool like flipping to a native chain pickerel fishery from invasive trout. Or maybe ya get brook trout back.
 
Had a huge problem with beavers when I was in Boise. They'd chew into a lot of trees along the river through town and they would eventually fall across the trails where thousands of people frequented daily. Funniest part was this was all year long. In winter they'd chew their typical :v" into a tree. But there was several feet of snow on the ground. When spring came with bigger crowds. Users would see these beaver chews, several feet up the trunk, wondering just how big these beaver actually were.
 
someone who I know with a PhD in fisheries science who now does stream restoration work once told me beavers could be a game changer for a lot of these streams essentially but that the biggest barrier was a “social barrier” rather than lack of effectiveness or benefit. He wasn’t only talking about peoples perception of the animal and what it does but also how they interact with them. Often they are trapped and killed when all
That is needed is a beaver deceiver device ect.

We see the same social aversion to the way rivers actually work with the people that recreate on and round these streams without any beavers. For example kayakers and paddlers chainsawing out every tree that falls across the river. See it all the time. People don’t understand or care how these ecosystems work they just want them to bend to their uses. They chainsaw the cross stream logo. Streams never changes course, accesses the flood plain any better, or develops any complex habitat Or wetlands for different life stages of fish. You just get a wiggly ditch not a real dynamic river. I think people would be shocked if they actually saw what a healthy stage zero river valley/wetland complex looked like.

I just bought a fly craft. Is floating a stream with numerous impassible wood jams ideal for a float? Deff not. Would it make me happy to see some streams I float rendered unnavigable by beavers and woody additions that would do wonders for the stream, absolutely.
 
tomgamber said:
Still water warms faster
Click to expand...
Yes but then after that it gets colder when it goes underground because its outside the original stream channel.


“Stream reaches downstream of dams exhibited an average decrease of 2.3°C during summer base-flow conditions.”

“Because dam building and pond formation by beaver can increase water storage, stream cooling, and riparian ecosystem resilience, beaver have been proposed as a potential climate adaption tool.”


Each stream is different, you can find some studies where temp went up slightly~1 deg Celsius. However if that stream doesn’t go dry in drought might still benefit brook trout. We know alot of them cool down streams and brook trout evolved with these things everywhere. We could likely be cooling down quite a few streams and stopping them from going dry with beavers.
 
Increasing beaver populations could be very beneficial for improving brook trout populations through improving habitat in the forested parts of PA.

But in the valleys with farms and houses there is probably much less potential because of conflicts with beaver dams and other uses of the floodplains.

i've seen beaver ponds that cover the entire floodplain, from hillslope to hillslope. And I've seen the kind of complex, multi-channel systems you describe, with multiple beaver dams on the multiple channels. These beaver swamp systems also occupy the entire floodplain.

In most places other than forest land, the floodplains are being used for farming, lanes, roads, buildings, parking areas, parks, power lines, phone lines, sewer lines, water lines, bike paths, etc.
 
I found out this year that a beaver pond I've been visiting every year for about the past 5 years is gone. No idea what happened to the beavers. They didn't move up the watershed. What used to be a complex of 3 good size beaver ponds with 10-12 inch brook trout is now a dried up channel in 3 feet of mud with a dozen 4-6 inch brook trout.

I'd love to see them brought back here. Maybe I should reach out to PGC and suggest if they have to remove/relocate beavers from somewhere else that it would be a good candidate for reintroduction.

Beaver benefit is directly correlated to elevation (and forest cover). High elevation beavers = good for brook trout. Low elevation beavers = bad for brook trout. The one I mentioned is at high elevation, so their ponds stayed cold year-round. It's also public land and remote with no potential impact to infrastructure.
 
silverfox said:
I found out this year that a beaver pond I've been visiting every year for about the past 5 years is gone. No idea what happened to the beavers. They didn't move up the watershed. What used to be a complex of 3 good size beaver ponds with 10-12 inch brook trout is now a dried up channel in 3 feet of mud with a dozen 4-6 inch brook trout.

I'd love to see them brought back here. Maybe I should reach out to PGC and suggest if they have to remove/relocate beavers from somewhere else that it would be a good candidate for reintroduction.

Beaver benefit is directly correlated to elevation (and forest cover). High elevation beavers = good for brook trout. Low elevation beavers = bad for brook trout. The one I mentioned is at high elevation, so their ponds stayed cold year-round. It's also public land and remote with no potential impact to infrastructure.
Click to expand...
I have also seen the scenario where the beavers are there and have ponds, and then come back and the ponds no longer exist and the beavers are gone.

I'm not able to tell whether these were due to normal changes or man's interventions. There is natural sequences of beavers moving into an area, creating dams, then moving on to other areas when they've used up their food supply. Then the mud flats where the ponds were go through vegetation succession, and some years in the future, the beavers move back in and the process repeats.

But I think in some cases the beavers are trapped out. And in some cases people deliberately breach beaver ponds.

So, I think there is some of both, but you'd have to be pretty observant and go there regularly to tell which process happened.
 
troutbert said:
I have also seen the scenario where the beavers are there and have ponds, and then come back and the ponds no longer exist and the beavers are gone.

I'm not able to tell whether these were due to normal changes or man's interventions. There is natural sequences of beavers moving into an area, creating dams, then moving on to other areas when they've used up their food supply. Then the mud flats where the ponds were go through vegetation succession, and some years in the future, the beavers move back in and the process repeats.

But I think in some cases the beavers are trapped out. And in some cases people deliberately breach beaver ponds.

So, I think there is some of both, but you'd have to be pretty observant and go there regularly to tell which process happened.
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In this case, their dams are still intact, so I suspect they were either killed by predators (lots of coyotes in there) or were killed by humans (also 4-wheeler tracks right to the pond).
 
Fish Sticks said:
They are absolutely trapped alot of “nuisance” wild life business do this. Example

www.bayjournal.com

A beaver champion in Virginia and the need for more like her

It was a teachable moment I’d rather not have had. I took a van full of Salisbury University students 130 miles to Baltimore to show how a colony of beavers
www.bayjournal.com www.bayjournal.com
Click to expand...
This describes beavers being trapped because of conflicts (real and perceived) with other land uses.

But probably more beavers are trapped and sold for the fur trade than for that reason. Especially in the public forest lands. There's not much money in it because of low fur prices, but people still do it, partly to keep the tradition going.

From what I've read on a PA website, people with trapping skills find it pretty easy to catch them. It's totally legal. The PGC has seasons and limits for beaver trapping. The question is whether those regulations and the amount of harvest taking place is appropriate, considering streams, brook trout, wetlands, wildlife etc.
 
troutbert said:
There is natural sequences of beavers moving into an area, creating dams, then moving on to other areas when they've used up their food supply. Then the mud flats where the ponds were go through vegetation succession, and some years in the future, the beavers move back in and the process repeats.
Click to expand...
Yes, that’s how they naturally function. There are a limited number of tree species that meet their foraging requirements and once the beavers “clean house” they move on. Often other reps of their species return to the same location in a decade or even a bit sooner once the sprouts from stumps plus other desirable saplings are dense enough and large enough to provide a forage base again. I had four decades at my office building to observe this cycle. It was fifty feet or so from such a stream/lake system.
 
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