Look closely and you may see signs of Maine’s many beavers in places like Schooner Head Road in Acadia National Park or Route 1 just north of Ellsworth or along the bike path in Old Town.
Ask some questions, and you will get conflicting views on whether beaver are an asset or a nuisance.
You probably won’t see the beavers themselves, but you may spot their lodge, which looks like a pile of tree limbs and brush that clogs a small stream and creates a pool. Nearby, you may see the pointed tree stumps with tooth marks where the beavers cut down trees for their food and lodging. They eat the inner bark and drag tree limbs and brush to the water and plaster them with mud to make a cozy lodge for themselves and their offspring.
America’s largest rodent, which can weigh more than 60 pounds, numbered possibly hundreds of millions before European colonization. But its thick, lustrous fur was so attractive to the colonists and the rest of the world that trappers almost drove the animals to extinction. Beaver hats and coats were popular, and beaver pelts sometimes served as currency.
When that craze passed, their population rebounded, aided by trapping restrictions and the growth of new hardwood forests, which they prefer. But their dams often clog culverts, leading to washouts of automobile or rail road beds. They can ruin an apple orchard.
The Road Management & Engineering Journal says that beavers cause millions of dollars in damage annually and can block a 12-inch culvert in 20 minutes. It advises beginning damage control as soon as a beaver problem appears, since removing an established colony is difficult and expensive.
On the plus side, beavers are industrious and clever. Many people admire their family structure. A male and female mate for life and raise usually one to four kits each spring and keep them around for two years, with the older ones baby-sitting for the new litter.
Environmentalists defend beavers as “nature’s engineers” and “the earth’s kidneys,” noting that their dams and lodges help control flooding, purify streams, and maintain wetlands.
Maine’s animal control officers and animal biologists are caught in the middle between the beaver haters and the beaver lovers. Phil Richter, an animal control officer for Hancock and Washington counties, handles 30 to 50 beaver nuisance complaints a year. For a clogged culvert, he sometimes rigs a horseshoe-shaped fence, so that the beavers build their dam there and the runoff can get past and into the culvert. Sometimes he encourages trappers, although the price of pelts has dropped. Or he may trap one and release it elsewhere. If he cuts a hole in a dam, the beaver will quickly repair the damage.
He is no beaver hater. He says he doesn’t drive around looking for a beaver he can take out. When he has to deal with one, he says, “It’s too bad, because he’s just being beaver.”