Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2018 11:36:06 -0400
From: J Mundok
Subject: RE: Beavers are riparian area cleaners
I don’t disagree with that, except they need to killed off when they invade close personal property. I own a ranch in WY and we have had terrible troubles with beavers. We have a very limited number of trees on our property. One day a couple of these “wonderful” critters chopped their way through a 200 year old cottonwood tree to the extent it killed the tree and we had to knock it down. They also cut down all the Aspen trees in front of my cabin after I put in years of careful nurturing in that environment.
The also plugged up our irrigation ditches so our alfalfa crop dried up and died. They are a nuisance. We hired a trapper to come in and he caught 25 of them in one week. The problem ceased to exist. One time I saw one in our lake and I jumped in and stapped it to death when I couldn’t find a gun to shoot it. If anyone wants to hear it I have a lot more amazing stories I can tell.
And as far as being “nature’s natural filters” let me point out that they universally are carriers of the Giardia Lamblia intestinal paracite. I have suffered from the nasty effects of that four times from drinking perfectly clear lake and stream water.