Beavers are architects of boreal character. Provide a combination of water and young deciduous tree species and they will come and remove the pioneer tree species leaving nature to fill the void with boreal conifers such as white/black spruce, balsam fir and tamarack.
One approach to “managing” the current harbor beaver problem could be to eliminate or translocate the current beavers. But continuing to provide beaver habitat (the harbor) and landscaping with beaver food will just ensure a different family of beavers will return another day.
Another approach would be to embrace the current beavers as an agent of change and work with them to establish a little more boreal character in the harbor.
We could give up on planting pioneer species (beaver food), let them eat what they will, and then follow nature’s cues by planting them out of house and home with boreal conifers and other species unpalatable to beavers.
This county has no shortage of good biologists—a quick call to just a few of them would reveal a whole suite of native landscape species (deciduous and conifer) that beaver find unpalatable.
With a little patience (the harbor is already marginal habitat), we could probably work with the beavers long enough to landscape them out of house and home…… and wind up a little more boreal in the process.
Brandon Seitz
Grand Marais
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