Site Discussions

Great detailed information and enthusiasm for his many-faceted job. Thanks.

Thank you James for your kind and thorough comment!

You are certainly correct that beavers have negative impacts; many land owners would likely have less kind words for me than your thoughtful comments.

That said, by most estimates, beavers have returned to dramatically smaller population levels than their pre-European hunting numbers.  Doubtless, they have dammed far fewer streams in recent years than they did before European colonization.

By extension, many of those streams would not have been suitable trout streams in that earlier time frame.  Removal of beavers may well have significantly expanded brook trout range in streams. It’s interesting to consider.

And they certainly remove trees both directly and by inundating their roots.

So is the return of the beaver a correction to a more natural state? If yes, this begs a second question: do we like this more natural state? I don’t think I’m smart enough to fully answer that question to the satisfaction of all.

There are so many interesting questions….but only so much space in a 750 word essay.  You may enjoy “Eager” by Ben Goldfarb.  He covers some interesting ground….and far more of it than I did.
Cheers
Declan

This is a great photo and article about the importance of vernal pools to “mole” salamanders and other species of wildlife.  The underwater photos are outstanding.  Thank you for the time and effort you put into the documentation.

The author of the article has done an excellent job of describing the pluses associated with beaver—- even mentioning some pluses I hadn’t thought about. However, it is unrealistic to say or imply that everything beaver do is a plus.  In substantial portions of New York State (certainly in the southwestern part of the State where I live) populations have expanded in many, many instances to nuisance or overstocked levels resulting in the killing of large desirable trees that are adjacent to their impoundments.  The need for a place to exist leads them to even take residence in existing ponds and lakes that benefit very little if at all from their presence.  They find highway culverts an easy place to establish an impoundment.  The State Division of Wildlife now routinely issues beaver destroy permits to private landowners and highway departments. After all, fur trapping has diminished to the point that it no longer seriously keeps beaver populations in check.

There’s another negative impact of beaver ponds that needs to be acknowledged. Wild populations of trout here in the mid-Atlantic States are more and more confined to the very headwaters of a limited number of stream systems especially if the stream systems are not of high gradient such as those found in more mountainous areas.  These lesser gradient (but not low- low gradient) headwater streams that historically had wild populations of trout are also where in my experience beaver populations prosper and proliferate quite successfully because their dams are less likely to get washed out (literally blown out) during periods of high runoff. Unfortunately the shallow impoundments created by beaver result in significantly warmer summer water temperatures—- warm enough so that cold-water-requiring trout can no longer survive in the stream except possibly in an even smaller piece of it.  Any significant fishery for these fewer remaining and typically small trout becomes essentially non-existent. The truth is that if there is no real trout fishery in these headwater streams, there is less concern for what is to become of any wild trout that they may hold.  And the situation for wild trout populations in general in many parts of the East can only get worse with climate change.

It may at first seem ironic that if you have beaver ponds on headwater streams in the Rocky Mountains, survival of wild trout is not in jeopardy at all (at least not at present) and you will in fact have some outstanding trout fishing in these ponds BUT the same is not true in much of the eastern United States because our streams are not fed in summer months by snowmelt.  Here in the mid-Atlantic region high gradient mountain streams and a relatively few lesser gradient streams notably fed by large year round springs are the principal hold outs for decent wild trout populations.

In conclusion, I will be among the first to say that beaver are of great benefit to a large array of species (waterfowl and wading birds immediately come to mind) but let’s also recognize that beaver can have negative environmental impacts too, especially when checks other than the amount of habitat available to them limits their populations.

I found one of these in a seasonal pond on the back of our property yesterday.  The pond was dried up-it has been a very dry spring and I found it under a rotting log.

I believe the reference to the cacophony in the article is specific to the frogs.

Fascinating! Thanks so much for sharing this interesting experience and information.

As the author of a book on brook trout (Squaretail: The Definitive Guide to Brook Trout), and Executive Director for a native fish non-profit (Native Fish Coalition), I understand what the regions wild native brook trout are up against.  Habitat degradation, fragmentation, warming water, nonnative fish, droughts, and floods have all taken their toll.  Another problem is angler exploitation and stocking, the latter of which is driven by the former.  NH and VT routinely stock over wild brook trout, including nonnative browns and rainbows.  In addition to competing with wild fish for food and space, stocked fish displace wild fish, and can introduce disease and parasites, negatively impact genetics, and prey on them due to their larger-than-natural size and concentrated high numbers.  Angler exploitation, a real problem in frontcountry rivers and streams as well as small ponds, reduces populations making them more susceptible to the impacts of floods and droughts, decreases genetic diversity, and diminishes fishing quality which results in calls for stocking.  In ME, the primary problem is nonnative fish such as muskies, pike, bass, smelt, and golden shiners.  In NH, while wild native brook trout persist in backcountry headwater streams, they are all but gone from most rivers, large streams, lakes, ponds, and easy-access small streams.  These waters are propped up almost solely through recurring stocking.  Interestingly, when I was young, many of the backcountry streams were exploited by the “worm and creel” anglers, which compromised many to the point that they too needed to be stocked.  As this group of anglers passed, traffic in the backcountry went way down and wild fish populations went up.  In fact, in some cases the streams of my youth are fishing better today than they did forty-plus years ago.  While addressing habitat degradation and fragmentation is critical to preserving and restoring wild brook trout, if we want to see them in the frontcountry, large rivers, and lakes and ponds again, we will need to address angler exploitation and stocking as well, something most groups have avoided due to pressure from state fish and game agencies and the angling community.  In Maine, there is a term that has been used by generations of anglers to describe waters with poor fishing: Fished out.  And to be clear, pressure is not the problem, harvest is, as many western waters withstand far more fishing pressure than most northeastern waters.  Adding woody debris is cited as reducing predation, in some cases man is the predator we need to protect the fish from.

I think these picture-dialog portraits of weekly happenings in our NH woods is one of the most interesting and informative articles anywhere available.

I have put a link to your ‘Week in the Woods’ on our Sutton Conservation Commission website. 

Henry Howell, Chair
Sutton Conservation Commission

Thank you Brett!

This is way cool. Wish I knew more about these wonderful creatures. 

This past summer I had a number of Covid refugees spending time in the Barrett Pond (Stoddard, NH) environs.  A couple kids with magnifying glasses and one with a very cheap “microscope” commented on all the “water wild life” in our pond. I have no idea what they found, but,  they found lots of remarkable forms of life in and around that pond resulting in hours of speculation and uncertainty. The kids loved it.

If you (or anyone from Harris Center) would like to make Barrett Pond a focus of your studies (short or long term), I’d like to invite you to set up shop here for a season or a decade or longer.  Does the Harris Center have any formal long-term study sites in Stoddard?     

I’m not going anywhere and I think you know where to find us.

George

This is the best article I’ve read all day, maybe all week! Roy Amey is a character and I mean that with the most fondness. Someone needs to make a movie of the life and times of him and his wife!

A marvelous photo sequence!!
I’m eager to see the red eft and adult forms to come.

Robert, thank you for the feedback. Collin, now (late March) is a good time to install the boxes. Periodically check them to make sure other birds haven’t taken over.

My tray feeder is protected by a baffle. Otherwise, the squirrels would be having a field day. Good luck.

Can you imagine my pleasure at running into the name of my old friend Gerard Courtin in this article? When I corresponded with Gerry, he said that this research was conducted in the back yard of a neighbor in Sudbury, Ontario.

Thank you.

Joel White
Lancaster, NH

I am just learning about fairy shrimp and am looking at the vernal pools in our woods in a whole new light. Love northern woodlands!

Thank you;  this was a very interesting post and answered many of the questions I’d been thinking about.

Well written article on the amazing work of Steven Johnson, Conservation photographer and professor at EMU.

I was bit by this bug (White-spotted Sawyer Beetle) just now in my bedroom. The bit did hurt and caught my attention. I’m not sure how it got in my room but it was on the side of my bed. I captured it and ran outside to let it go.

Broad-winged hawks do kettle on their northward migration, but late winter / early spring sightings are rare in Massachusetts. They begin to return in numbers starting in mid-April. Turkey vultures also kettle during migration and March is when they’re moving through the Bay State. Distinguishing features or behaviors are hard to recognize when birds are soaring at high altitudes, but if the birds are soaring with two-toned wings held in a shallow V and if they teeter as they glide, then that would indicate turkey vulture.

I enjoyed this article very much. It was well written and gave me a much welcome overview of the life of this species, while at the same time sharing with readers the writer’s enjoyment of this creature.