Sara Arkle, parks resource superintendent for Boise Parks and Recreation, noted in an email that "beaver activity is a consistent management consideration." And Roger Phillips, Idaho Fish and Game spokesperson, said in a phone interview that management is all about balance: "There's no such thing as a good beaver or bad beaver." To some, "herbeavery" is a perennial nuisance, signs of an unwanted squatter gnawing on their trees and garden goods, and causing irreparable property damage. "You don't really know what they're going to do." "Beavers are kind of chaotic," said Kolarik. student at Boise State University monitoring ecosystem dynamics in wetland habitats, brought up with the Statesman the concept of a "cultural carrying capacity"-meaning the maximum number of a species that can be tolerated-and suggested that this is the crux of the matter for beavers. Why the urge to stockpile sticks? They do it to create deeper ponds, so that they can dodge predators like coyotes, mountain lions, wolves, bobcats and bears.Īre there too many of those ponds along the Boise River system and across Idaho this year? Is the beaver population out of control or is it stable? Those can be difficult questions to answer.īoth Mosby and Nick Kolarik, a Ph.D. ![]() "It's like they're hardwired in their brains to dam moving water," quipped Mosby. Like most rodents, they need to munch to keep their teeth trimmed, so telltale signs of these hungry herbivores are bite marks and bark stripped off branches, or tree cuttings piled up high enough to dam moving water. As North America's largest rodents, beavers "eat a couple pounds of vegetation a day." "If you have a beaver in your system, it's pretty obvious," Cory Mosby, Idaho Fish and Game's furbearer biologist, told the Idaho Statesman in a phone interview. The animals serve vital purposes, but they also can be so destructive that they have to be relocated. The North American beaver, Castor canadensis, is not a subtle species. Rather, the mesh is protective, meant to stave off the city's resident beavers.
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