Brad Harvey: What to do when the beaver is winning

Last week I received an email from someone asking what I knew about beavers.

“Just enough to be dangerous,” I replied, before asking them to call me to discuss exactly what they needed to know.

“Well, I’m 54 years old and have spent my whole life on this property,” said the caller. “Never once saw a beaver until last year when I spotted the first one and now this place is overrun with them. They’re tearin’ the whole place up!”

I explained to him that his first mistake was waiting a year before taking action against them, since a single beaver can decimate a piece of property in short order.

When you give beavers enough time to start a family, they, along with your troubles, can multiply in a hurry.

Because we haven’t seen much of them in our lifetimes, most folks around here think that beavers are an invasive species, much like the coyotes.

They’re not, but our state’s population of them was decimated by trappers in search of their fur in the late 1800s.

After that time only a few remnant scatterings were found in South Carolina’s most remote locations.

During the winter of 1940, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service relocated a few from Georgia to the Sandhills Wildlife Refuge in Chesterfield County and re-established the species into our area.

Between those, the few left by the trappers and others that traveled from Georgia on their own by way of the Savannah River drainage system, these destructive critters have spread into all 46 counties in the state.

If you’ve never seen one, beavers are large brown rodents with webbed rear feet and flat, scaly tails. Most of us think of little animals such as mice or rats when we hear the word rodent, but an adult beaver averages around 40 pounds and have been known to reach as much as 60.

They have large heads and matching bodies with no distinguishable neck, long claws that help them to dig and a set of chompers that would make any dentist smile.

If you don’t understand how these things can be so destructive, just consider their diet.

Unlike the muskrats, beavers don’t survive on the fish and mussels.

Instead, they are true vegetarians, surviving on aquatic plants during the summer and the bark of trees during the cooler months.

After gnawing their way through a tree, the animal will eat the bark and then use the remaining log to construct its dams and lodges.

It’s amazing to see just how devastating one of them can be to an area in just a single winter.

Kind of makes you wonder why the federal government would have ever brought them back around.

Believe it or not, not everything about the beaver is bad.

First off, they’re better at marriage and family life than we are. A family of beavers typically consists of a mature male, a mature female and as many as two sets of offspring.

Breeding takes place around December with a litter of two to three beavers showing up around March.

Maturing at two years of age, the young will move in search of a mate to begin a life of their own. Beavers don’t believe in divorce as, once mated, a couple will remain together for life.

What appears to us as destruction creates excellent habitat for other wildlife. Waterfowl, amphibians, reptiles and fish all benefit from the dammed impoundments that beavers create.

Wood ducks, which are the only duck that nests in our state in large numbers, prefer these critter-made ponds because they provide an abundance of food.

Despite this positive attribute, these animals tend to cause a lot of headaches.

The economic impact on timber stands and agricultural crops from both the cutting and flooding can be extensive and in such cases it’s often necessary to rid the place of them.

When the gentleman who contacted me asked what he could do, here are the basics of what I told him.

For starters, don’t destroy the dams or lodges. This won’t cause them to leave and you’ll be amazed the next morning when you wake to find that what took you all day to destroy was rebuilt overnight.

If you are going to try this route, you’ll have to not only demolish what they’ve constructed, but remove every piece from the area so that it can’t be reused. Then you’ll have to return each day to keep up the demolition and debris removal.

At some point, they may give up and move on but it’s not likely.

Trapping is the usual method for taking care of them, and there are a number of trappers and nuisance wildlife agents in the area.

If the beavers are more than 100 yards from a residence, then a depredation permit from the state will be required.

This is because the beaver is classified as a fur bearing animal with a dedicated trapping season that runs from Jan. 1 through March 1.

The permit is obtained from the Department of Natural Resources when the animals are causing property or crop damage and will allow landowners to take them out at any time of the year.

If the animals are within that 100 yard area from the residence, the landowner is free to go at them without it.

If you have a beaver problem and need help taking care of it, call DNR’s Furbearer Project at 803-734-3609.

This story was originally published April 7, 2015 at 11:59 AM with the headline "Brad Harvey: What to do when the beaver is winning."