As one can see by the picture, Grand Marais Recreational Park employees have been spending plenty of time beaver proofing trees in the park. However, the beaver have been able to keep up with their logging exploits and have been taking down trees at an alarming rate which is causing the park board to seek to have the beaver removed from the harbor.
The Grand Marais harbor has long been home to a variety of fish and birds, and now, after a long absence, otter and beaver have taken up residence in the pristine waters. While all the animal action might make for a great postcard, the beaver have been—well—busy as beavers chewing down trees along the shoreline.
And all of that logging has caused problems.
Currently beaver have been building an adorable (to some) lodge that is attached to the North House Folk School dock, and while it is typically nice to get new neighbors, the owners of the Angry Trout, Dockside Fish Market and the managers of the folk school and the Grand Marais Recreation Park don’t seem to appreciate the cute, sweet, furry little creatures and are all in favor of taking steps to eradicate them, said Grand Marais Park Board manager Dave Tersteeg at the Grand Marais Park Board’s Thursday, December 6, meeting.
“Beavers are taking down trees at an alarming rate,” Tersteeg told the board, and steps to trap them have resulted in one dead female beaver so far, but, he added, the trapper had given up after someone vandalized his traps.
“We were having it [trapping] done at night to be discreet, but someone found out about it and sprung the traps and removed some of them,” Tersteeg said, adding that the trapper didn’t want his name known and that he didn’t want to trap in the harbor anymore. “I have contacted the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and they gave me some names of trappers that they felt would do a good job and be responsible, but none of them want to take the job,” Tersteeg said.
While the park staff has spent time and money planting trees and then “beaver proofing” them, Tersteeg said the ambitious critters have taken to cutting further and further inland.
“A pair of beavers can cut down 400 trees a year,” Tersteeg told the board.
When asked how many beaver occupied the harbor, Tersteeg said they knew there were at least three left, and maybe more.
Beating bodaciously bad beaver behavior then became the center of the board’s conversation for the next 15 minutes. Tersteeg noted his staff had taken to putting as much as three rows of fencing around some trees, had coned other trees, boxed some trees, wrapped some trees in plastic and wire, but stopping the denuding of the shoreline was getting to be tough and costing money.
“We’re looking at it as a resource management issue,” Tersteeg said.
Board member Bill Lenz said he thought the board should look for another trapper while board chair Walt Mianowski said that just because the beavers were causing problems to the park trees, not everyone would see it in that light.
“One person’s problem is another person’s pleasure,” Mianowski said of the plight of the beaver.
After much discussion centering on the cost, time and effort to plant, protect, and water trees, the board passed a motion for Tersteeg to continue to look at having the beaver trapped and removed from the harbor.
When asked about live trapping the beaver, Tersteeg asked where live traps could be purchased and board member Tracy Benson said Buck’s Hardware sold live traps. At the board’s request Tersteeg said he would continue to look for a trapper and would look into finding someone who could live trap the beaver and move them inland.
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