Butting Heads With Beavers
Dec. 6, 2004 — -- Rod Barker liked his new neighbors. They attracted other interesting neighbors, provided entertainment and were, in Barker's opinion, very "cute." The problem is their construction work leads to perpetual flooding in his basement.
"I've gone downstairs and found a foot and a half of water," said the Collinsville, Conn., resident. "Something had to be done."
Barker, like a growing number of Americans who live in rural areas, has a beaver problem. Ever since the animals settled into nearby Rattlesnake Brook and dammed the waters to create a cozy home, Barker's house has become flooded and he has lost prized trees to the rodents' impressive teeth.
It used to be that beavers were a threatened species in the United States. Beaver pelts were treasured commodities often used to make hats and were even traded as currency in parts of the frontier. By the 1930s, the industrious animals had nearly been wiped out by trapping.
But a combination of trapping restrictions, a reforestation of farmland and a decrease in value of beaver pelts has fostered a dramatic comeback among beaver populations to the point that wildlife officials in some states are thinking trapping restrictions may not have been a great idea.
In Massachusetts, for example, wildlife officials have noted a more than threefold jump in beaver populations from 20,000 to 70,000 since a 1996 ballot measure banned the use of lethal traps. In recent years voters in three other states -- Arizona, California and Colorado -- have passed similar measures.
State legislators have done the same in Florida, New Jersey and Rhode Island. In Oregon, trappers killed about 2,700 beavers in 2003, down from 10,000 or more annually in the 1980s when pelt prices were higher than today's standard cost of $14.
Chrissie Henner, a fur bearer biologist for the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, says voting records show people who voted for the 1996 measure were largely from urban areas where, she says, there can be a general ignorance of the potential conflicts between growing populations of beaver and people.
Related Stories
ABC News Live