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<\/a><\/p>\nLike other old-timers in the Gunnison Valley, Sam Pierce\u2019s ranching ancestors used to blast beavers and their dams and lodges with dynamite. They viewed beavers as nuisances \u2014 nothing more than big rats that flooded their fields and could scramble water rights with their diversions.<\/p>\n
Now, Pierce, a Stanford University Ph.D. student, and a contractor with the U.S. Department of Energy and Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory<\/a>, is back in his ancestral valley researching the good that the cursed rats of old do around the beaver stronghold of Crested Butte.\u00a0<\/p>\n His conclusion: Beavers are \u201cnature\u2019s engineers, hydrologists and biochemists.\u201d<\/p>\n Pierce\u2019s differing family views offer a good example of beavers being highly controversial critters.<\/p>\n An ecologist or an animal lover might describe them as darling little ecosystem engineers with nearsighted eyes, buck teeth and tubby rear ends. When they build their ingenious humps of wood and muck on waterways, they are praised for bringing lands alive with lush threaded wetlands that offer resiliency in droughts and wildfires<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n On the other hand, a rancher or streamside homeowner might counter that they are just smelly rats \u2014 rats with a single-minded penchant for property damage. They gnaw down landscaping and cause floods with their incessant dam building.\u00a0<\/p>\n Enter Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the agency still reeling through the controversy of trying to manage voter-mandated wolf reintroduction. This month, CPW is having to wade into the middle of the contentious beaver debate and come up with a management strategy for an animal considered a keystone species<\/a>. That means an entire ecosystem would change drastically without the presence of beavers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Any management strategy CPW comes up with will have to fall somewhere between controlling \u201crodenta non grata\u201d and preserving the hottest little fur bearers since capybaras overwhelmed TikTok with cuteness<\/a>.<\/p>\n LEFT: A beaver maintains her lodge on Trail Creek by packing it with mud. (Courtesy: Dave Sutherland, EcoMetrics) RIGHT: Paul Vertrees walks past the handiwork of beavers along Grape Creek in Fremont County in December of 2020. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/p>\n Enthusiasm for our flat-tailed friends is, well, building<\/p>\n Beyond the serious environmental work of beavers, the creatures are totally having a moment. Their popularity infuses CPW\u2019s mission with emotional import on top of scientific input.\u00a0<\/p>\n There are scads of North American beaver advocacy and research organizations spread from Worth A Dam<\/a> in Martinez, California, to the Beaver Institute<\/a> \u2014 with its own Beaver Library \u2014 in Southampton, Massachusetts. Colorado is home to Give a Dam<\/a>, the Kawuneeche Valley Restoration Collaborative<\/a>, the Colorado Beaver Working Group<\/a>, Pitkin County Healthy Rivers<\/a>, and the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies<\/a>. The latter is included in beaver groups because it views beavers as \u201cour secret superheroes.\u201d<\/p>\n This story first appeared in Experience the best in Colorado news at a slower pace, with thoughtful articles, unique adventures and a reading list that\u2019s a perfect fit for a Sunday morning.<\/p>\n Beaver conventions and festivals have popped up like dams on a meandering mountain stream in recent years. So have beaver books, beaver classes, and, of course, beaver swag.<\/p>\n Last year, the Beaver Institute\u2019s BeaverCon<\/a> brought more than 500 beaver enthusiasts to Boulder from around the world for six days of all things beaver<\/a>. In addition to serious discussions of the newest ideas in beaver ecology and management, attendees scooped up cartoon beaver caps and T-shirts and beaver-chewed sticks that had been turned into pencils.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Durango hosted a beaver festival in June<\/a> that featured a beaver theater presentation and a beaver parade.<\/p>\n New cadres of beaver helpmates have also popped up along streams and ponds. There is a fairly new specialty of human dam builders who slop around in streams copying beavers\u2019 stick-built schematics. The humans build beaver dams, which essentially serve as speed bumps on waterways and help create wetlands. The hope is that the mimicry will entice beavers to return to areas where they once lived.\u00a0<\/p>\n There are also beaver conflict resolution specialists like Paul Planer of Gunnison. His mission is just what it sounds like: solving problems between castor canadensis and hominids \u2014 the two species credited with having the most impact on the Earth\u2019s environment.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s highly frustrating. Beavers have had a nuisance title hung around them for so long,\u201d Planer said about his part-time beaver-trouble gig. \u201cBeavers are an agent of change, and some people don\u2019t like change.\u201d<\/p>\n CPW is also tackling that stigma through its Beaver Conservation and Management Strategy<\/a> scoping period. The agency has designated August as a time to sort out some of the arguments over beavers. That involves bringing together beaver experts, beaver haters, beaver hunters and beaver proponents to weigh in on the creatures\u2019 future in Colorado.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been pleasantly surprised. So far, there hasn\u2019t been that much controversy,\u201d said Boyd Wright, CPW\u2019s native aquatic species coordinator. \u201cPeople who have beaver concerns are getting their concerns heard.\u201d<\/p>\n Wright said he is detecting more respect for beavers in the steady stream of public commenters and in focus group sessions that are tackling topics like beaver harvest regulations, translocation policies, and techniques for coexistence.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWaddling pears\u201d on land are balletic under water<\/p>\n That kind of bureaucratic policy structuring can almost make beavers sound boring. They are anything but.<\/p>\n True, they are rodents \u2014 the second-largest rodents in the world after the South American capybara<\/a>. At up to 60 pounds, beavers can equal the heft of a Labrador retriever.<\/p>\n Beavers\u2019 leathery, oil-filled tails are one of their most unique parts. They use them to slap water with a crack that can sound like a cherry bomb. It is designed to send a don\u2019t-mess-with-me message to intruders and a warning to pond mates.\u00a0<\/p>\n Beavers\u2019 webbed feet serve two functions. The clawed forepaws are well-designed diggers. All four feet propel beavers through water in fluid, balletic displays that are prolonged by their ability to hold their breath underwater for up to 15 minutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n Swimming is key to beavers\u2019 survival because they are not at all graceful or quick on land. Ben Goldfarb, in his seminal book on beavers titled \u201cEager<\/a>,\u201d accurately calls beavers \u201cwaddling pears\u201d on land.\u00a0<\/p>\n That clumsiness is behind their drive to continually work at raising water levels on streams and ponds. They need that water to survive. When they are on land, they are exposed to predators.<\/p>\n Beavers are an agent of change, and some people don\u2019t like change.<\/p>\n \u2014 Paul Planer, Beaver conflict resolution specialist<\/p>\n Beavers have a few other odd attributes that suit them to life lived in water. They have transparent eyelids so they can see underwater and two sets of lips so they can chew and drag wood and vegetation through water without drowning.\u00a0 The second set of lips is hidden behind their big orange teeth.<\/p>\n Those teeth aren\u2019t the color of clown shoes because they are dirty. They are loaded with iron, which makes them strong enough to chomp down mature trees. A beaver can topple a 5-inch diameter tree in half an hour.<\/p>\n Beavers only eat vegetation \u2014 greens in summer and more bark in winter. Contrary to a general misconception, they don\u2019t eat whole trees. They topple them to get at the leaves and bark. They stash that food in their lodges. They also stuff caches of greenery, bark and sticks under rafts they build and float near their lodges.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Fur fashion nearly drove beavers to extinction and they\u2019re still hunted<\/p>\n Beavers\u2019 unique fur got them into trouble and nearly drove them to extinction when explorers and trappers touched off a craze for beaver hats to keep the heads of dandies, monarchs, presidents and soldiers toasty. Beaver fur has two dense, oily layers making it exceptionally warm and water-repellent.<\/p>\n Before European explorers arrived, the castoroides, some the size of small bears<\/a>, had been at their busy work for 7.5 million years. There were once as many as 250 million beaver ponds across North America, according to Goldfarb.\u00a0<\/p>\n There are no good numbers for just how many beavers are chewing their way across the country now. Wright estimates there could be 60,000 to 90,000 in the southern Rockies. A Colorado Beaver Activity map<\/a> shows beaver areas marked by yellow dots. On the Continental Divide and to the west, the map looks like it has been scattered with heavy pollen, evidence that beavers prefer high mountain headwaters areas.<\/p>\n Beavers are no longer widely trapped for their fur. It is not worth much in an era of ripstop hoodies.<\/p>\n But there are still beaver hunters out there.\u00a0<\/p>\n Last year, CPW counted about 1,000 beavers \u201charvested.\u201d<\/a> Wright said questions to hunters about where the beavers were killed indicate it wasn\u2019t just for sport. Landowners likely hired some of those hunters to rid their properties of the dam builders as 536 of which were taken on private land. There are no bag limits for hunting beaver in Colorado. <\/p>\n Through its management strategy phase, CPW is hoping to lessen the need for that beaver blasting. The keyword in CPW\u2019s beaver strategizing is \u201ccoexistence.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n That includes improving tolerance for beavers\u2019 presence by using flow devices on beaver ponds to control water levels and lessen floods; putting rigid fencing or sanded paint around trees; and using cages to keep beavers from plugging up culverts and overflowing roads. Those devices are all lumped under the category of \u201cbeaver deceivers.\u201d<\/p>\n When coexistence isn\u2019t possible, \u201ctranslocations\u201d are another step. Translocating beavers means trapping them and moving them to a new home. The success rate is not high because beavers tend to return to their previous neighborhoods, especially if some of their offspring, known as kits, have been left behind. Translocations also come with the danger of introducing pathogens to new waterways.<\/p>\n Beaver numbers are somewhat hard to push up because beavers are unlike most other rodents when it comes to reproduction.<\/p>\n Beavers mate for life and have one to six kits per year. Those juveniles tend to hang out with their parents in the home lodges for up to two years before they swim off to stake out and dam their own ponds. Some lodges hold three generations of beavers.<\/p>\n Humans build dams to mimic the real thing<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/BEAVER-RESTORATION-001-edit-2-1200x900.jpg\")
Sam Pierce measures the distance across a beaver dam on Trail Creek in the Gunnison National Forest. (Dean Krakel, Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Beaver-2-edited-scaled.jpeg\")
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Colorado Sunday, a premium magazine newsletter for members. <\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/quote_white.png\")
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Paul Planer walks in front of a Keystone Fence that he put in place to prevent beavers from plugging a culvert along Cement Creek road near South Crested Butte. (Dean Krakel, Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/p>\n
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Mark Beardsley poses in front of a beaver dam on Trail Creek. The dam and waterways were restored by the Beaver Institute\u2019s Beaver Corps and Beardsley\u2019s company EcoMetrics. (Dean Krakel, Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/BEAVER-RESTORATION-001-edit-6-1200x772.jpg\")
Dr. David Rey of the Hydrologic Remote Sensing branch of the the United States Geological Survey looks for places to put sensors that will take seismic measurements of the ground beneath a restored beaver dam on Trail Creek in the Gunnison National Forest on Aug. 7. (Dean Krakel, Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/p>\n