Speaker 1: Welcome to Backwoods University, a place where we focus on
Speaker 1: wild life, wild places and the people who dedicate their
Speaker 1: lives to conserving both. Big shout out to ONEX Hunt
Speaker 1: for their support of this podcast. I'm your host, Lake Pickle,
Speaker 1: and man am I ever so excited for today's episode.
Speaker 1: Today's typic of discussion is about an animal that I'm
Speaker 1: most sure all of you are familiar with. Heck, all
Speaker 1: of us know what beavers are known for doing. They're
Speaker 1: the original subjects for the saying you had one job.
Speaker 1: They see flowing water and they go absolutely not. And
Speaker 1: when they wake up in the morning, I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: they say to themselves, it seems like a good day
Speaker 1: to build a dam. Okay, I'm mostly joking here if
Speaker 1: you can't tell, but y'all get what I'm saying. Beaver's
Speaker 1: are primarily known for doing one thing, building dams. It's
Speaker 1: a blessing and a curse. It's what has made them
Speaker 1: get the label as a nuisance species in many circles
Speaker 1: and one of the factors that has made them popular
Speaker 1: amongst trappers. However, in today's episode, we're gonna be looking
Speaker 1: at beaver's in a different life, possibly in a way
Speaker 1: you've never thought of them before. It's time to add
Speaker 1: some much needed complexity to the way this critter is perceived.
Speaker 1: Let's dive in. Before we dive in with our two guests,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do my best impression of my friend
Speaker 1: Brent Reeves, and I'm going to tell you a story.
Speaker 1: It's one that happened long ago, and it will set
Speaker 1: the stage perfectly for where we're going with this. Yall ready,
Speaker 1: here we go. This is the story of the parachuting beavers.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I did say parashuting beavers, and it takes
Speaker 1: place in Idaho in nineteen forty eight. Now, as we
Speaker 1: alluded to earlier, beavers build damps. Theyre what is referred
Speaker 1: to as a keystone species, which is a term that
Speaker 1: applies to one particular organism that makes a disproportionately large
Speaker 1: influence on its environment relative to its often low abundance,
Speaker 1: which in Layman's terms, means a small amount of beavers
Speaker 1: can a big amount of difference. Another important thing to
Speaker 1: know about a keystone species is that they are critical
Speaker 1: for maintaining biodiversity as well as habitat structure, and their
Speaker 1: removal can often cause significant ecological shifts, which again in
Speaker 1: Layman's terms, means taking beavers out of an area. It's
Speaker 1: gonna shake some things up. Some say that a beaver
Speaker 1: could transform a landscape like no other creature in the
Speaker 1: entire animal kingdom. This innate ability that beavers have to
Speaker 1: engineer their own ecosystems that they reside in is the
Speaker 1: most important part of what was going on in Idaho
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty eight. You see, it was becoming a problem.
Speaker 1: It was just after World War Two and people had
Speaker 1: discovered how beautiful places like McCall and Pyette Lake were.
Speaker 1: Folks were building homes, setting up communities and places where
Speaker 1: beavers had been hanging around and doing their thing for centuries.
Speaker 1: As the communities grew larger, the conflicts with beavers increased.
Speaker 1: The beavers were wiping out trees, riparian bush, damning creeks,
Speaker 1: causing them to flood, and risking serious damage to the
Speaker 1: town and its residences. So the question was what do
Speaker 1: you do about this? That's where creativity and initiative end
Speaker 1: of the story in the form of a man named
Speaker 1: Elmo Heater. Now, besides having a super cool name, Elmo
Speaker 1: worked for the Idaho Fishing Game right in the McCaul
Speaker 1: Lake area. He had experience with beavers, and he was
Speaker 1: tasked with finding a solution. Elmo figured out early on
Speaker 1: that relocation of these beavers was by far the best answer. However,
Speaker 1: this solution was a lot easier said than done. An
Speaker 1: area called the Chamberlain Basin would be the perfect place
Speaker 1: to relocate these beavers. It was said to be a
Speaker 1: beaver paradise and that their presence would be beneficial to
Speaker 1: the habitat. The Chamberlain Basin lies in what is now
Speaker 1: called the frank Church River of No Return wilderness area.
Speaker 1: It was about one hundred miles away and it contained
Speaker 1: no roads and was by all accounts rugged country. There
Speaker 1: would be no driving in there. There wouldn't be landing
Speaker 1: any planes, helicopters, or even a hot air balloon. I
Speaker 1: suppose you could pack them in there on foot, but
Speaker 1: no one was volunteering to do that, and they actually
Speaker 1: attempted mules and horses at one point, but it was
Speaker 1: said that the pack animals became spooky and quarrelsome when
Speaker 1: loaded down with a struggling pair of odorous live beavers,
Speaker 1: and so Elmo was forced to get creative, Like we
Speaker 1: said at the beginning of the story. This was right
Speaker 1: after World War Two. Elmo knew of a surplus of parachutes,
Speaker 1: and that's when he formed the idea of paratrooping these
Speaker 1: beavers from a plane into the back country of the
Speaker 1: Chamberlain Basin. Just imagine how that went the first time
Speaker 1: he presented that idea to a meeting of his peers.
Speaker 1: This is speculative on my part here, but I just
Speaker 1: have to imagine that he got at least one or
Speaker 1: two you're crazy remarks throwing his direction. However, Elmo was
Speaker 1: confident that it would work, that it would solve the
Speaker 1: problem in growing communities, and it would help the habitat
Speaker 1: of the Chamberlain Basin, a real win win win situation.
Speaker 1: Those are rare. Now that the plan was hatched, it
Speaker 1: had to be carried out. It's one thing to say
Speaker 1: you're going to air bomb some live beavers into the
Speaker 1: wilderness with the safe landing. It's another thing to actually
Speaker 1: figure out how to do it. The first idea was
Speaker 1: a woven willow box, and the premise was that these
Speaker 1: beavers would hit the ground chew their way out freedom,
Speaker 1: which I supposed. It's a pretty good idea in theory,
Speaker 1: but it ended up not working because the beavers commenced
Speaker 1: to chewing the second that they were put in the
Speaker 1: woven boxes. This gave high risk that the beavers would
Speaker 1: either bust loose inside the plane or bust loose while
Speaker 1: they were still high in the sky on the parachute ride.
Speaker 1: Neither of those are ideal, so Elmo ended up designing
Speaker 1: a box that the beavers were unable to get their
Speaker 1: teeth around and would then open upon impact. It was
Speaker 1: tested first with some dummy weights, which appeared to work.
Speaker 1: Then they found an older male beaver in Fyi. This
Speaker 1: is probably my favorite part of this story. Elmo decided
Speaker 1: to name this beaver Geronimo, seemed fitting. Luckily for both
Speaker 1: Geronimo and Elmo, the box worked. They tested it over
Speaker 1: and over again to make sure of it, which meant
Speaker 1: Geronimo the beaver took a parachute ride over and over again,
Speaker 1: and once they tested it enough to the point that
Speaker 1: they were all convinced that it would work, it was
Speaker 1: time to start a fish relocating beavers. As a reward
Speaker 1: for all of this, old Geronimo became the first male
Speaker 1: beaver to arrive in the Chamberlain basin with three other
Speaker 1: female friends. It said from the observers that once Geronimo
Speaker 1: figured out that his air travel days were over, he
Speaker 1: started immediately building a colony with his lady friends. Hats
Speaker 1: off to you, Geronimo. After this first successful relocation of
Speaker 1: beavers from the heavens dropping down into this dry basin
Speaker 1: like a mana from above, seventy six more beavers followed suit.
Speaker 1: All were in agreeance that this was a successful project
Speaker 1: that created some amazing habitat in now what is the
Speaker 1: largest protected roadless forest in the lower forty eight. It
Speaker 1: was so successful that some modern biologists wonder why they
Speaker 1: didn't continue to move beavers past nineteen forty eight. However,
Speaker 1: it is highly likely that the offspring of those first
Speaker 1: beavers are still living and helping the habitat of the
Speaker 1: frank Church Wilderness to this very day. Pretty crazy, right,
Speaker 1: But let's pause for a second, let's zoom out on
Speaker 1: all this. Why am I sharing this story with you? Well,
Speaker 1: the reason is because, as listeners of this show, you know,
Speaker 1: we focus in on how we as humans interact with wildlife.
Speaker 1: Our relationship with wildlife. The relationship with humans and beavers
Speaker 1: is long and it's convoluted. Can beavers be a nuisance? Yes,
Speaker 1: of course they can. We see that today and we
Speaker 1: saw it in that story. But can beaver's also be
Speaker 1: incredibly beneficial for wildlife, wildlife habitat and to humans also? Yes,
Speaker 1: Like most other facets of life, there's complexity to this.
Speaker 1: So we learned about the beaver problems and solutions of
Speaker 1: nineteen forty eight. However, I'm interested in what's going on
Speaker 1: with beavers today, and believe me, there's plenty going on.
Speaker 1: It's time for you to meet Nate Norman, the lead
Speaker 1: field biologist for the Beaver Ecology and Relocation Collaborative at
Speaker 1: Utah State University, an organization that was founded to enhance
Speaker 1: and support the practice of relocating beavers to improve degraded riverscapes.
Speaker 1: They're a well established program now, but I want to
Speaker 1: first learn how they got.
Speaker 2: Started, specifically in this area in northern Utah. There were
Speaker 2: two college professors, Joe Wheaton and Nick Bowis, and they
Speaker 2: came up with an idea of doing fake beaver dams.
Speaker 2: They're called BDA's beaver dam analogs, and they were working
Speaker 2: on projects in northern Utah and southern Idaho and realized
Speaker 2: that these fake beaver dams did a lot of the
Speaker 2: restoration work that they were hoping for, but that over
Speaker 2: time they broke down. So the real goal was to
Speaker 2: get beavers on there and let the beavers do the
Speaker 2: work rather than having humans come in and fix these
Speaker 2: fake beaver dams.
Speaker 1: Did anyone know that there were some folks already making
Speaker 1: artificial beaver dams or beaverdam analogs as a form of
Speaker 1: wetland and habitat restoration, which to me is kind of
Speaker 1: hard not to see the humor in because it seems
Speaker 1: like a whole lot of time, effort, and money to
Speaker 1: build a structure that a beaver will build you for free,
Speaker 1: which I suppose is why they eventually moved to beaver relocation.
Speaker 1: But I think it's an important fact to highlight as
Speaker 1: we move forward that the need for the water daming
Speaker 1: impact on the landscape was something that people were already
Speaker 1: becoming aware of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're hitting on something that you know is profound
Speaker 2: in the fact that that is why they had to
Speaker 2: make fake beaver dams. The thought is is that they
Speaker 2: don't want beavers on their properties. You can't control a beaver, right,
Speaker 2: you want a beaver to build a dam there and
Speaker 2: there and there, but not over here, and you don't
Speaker 2: want it to flood your road or you don't want
Speaker 2: it to you know, out here, block irrigation ditches, that
Speaker 2: sort of thing. And so we can go in and
Speaker 2: we can put them right where we want them. When
Speaker 2: a beaver gets in there, then they got their own
Speaker 2: mind and they're going to do their own thing. And
Speaker 2: you know, hopefully they're going to help you out and
Speaker 2: create the ponds and the water where you want them,
Speaker 2: but they're also going to create some issues where you
Speaker 2: don't want them. And so that's you know, kind of
Speaker 2: why our program got started. In certain areas, beavers are
Speaker 2: a nuisance. And you know the fact is is that
Speaker 2: before you know, the West was developed, the trappers came
Speaker 2: through and they they were the first ones to come
Speaker 2: into these areas and the very first thing they did
Speaker 2: removed all the beavers right. So then behind them they've
Speaker 2: kind of blazed the trail and settlers start coming in.
Speaker 2: But settlers move into an area that has now been debiabered, right,
Speaker 2: and the beavers have been moved out of the area.
Speaker 2: So they look at these stream banks that are had
Speaker 2: been flooded by beaver dams that have now been broke down,
Speaker 2: and these lush, rich soils are there because of the
Speaker 2: beaver dams, and now they're developing or moving into those
Speaker 2: areas to plant their crops. So you can just see
Speaker 2: the progression as to how we just moved right into
Speaker 2: the areas where the beavers were, and now we have
Speaker 2: an issue with the beavers coming back to these areas
Speaker 2: and creating issues for us. I don't think we're going
Speaker 2: to move out of the beavers bottom lands anytime soon.
Speaker 2: But luckily here in Utah, we have a lot of
Speaker 2: public land. We have areas that it is, you know,
Speaker 2: very open, and there is not a lot of infrastructure,
Speaker 2: so we can actually move these beavers into these areas
Speaker 2: to create this habitat. I don't know if this would
Speaker 2: work as well, you know, in somewhere out east, where
Speaker 2: you know, you have a much bigger human population, but
Speaker 2: it works for us here.
Speaker 1: Let's think back to the parachute beaver story for a minute.
Speaker 1: If y'all remember back in nineteen forty eight, the original
Speaker 1: conflict with beavers arose because civilizations were moving into areas
Speaker 1: where beavers had been existing for years. Fast forward to
Speaker 1: what's happening today, and it's really not that much different.
Speaker 1: As Nate outlined, some of these places that we as
Speaker 1: humans choose to reside, plant crops, build houses, and so
Speaker 1: on are also areas that beaver like, and thus we
Speaker 1: have conflict and there are definitely real instances where beavers
Speaker 1: can become nuisances. However, much like Elmo, a few folks
Speaker 1: decided to get creative.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we call it a win win win, Right. You've
Speaker 2: got the land owners, you know, that are having problems
Speaker 2: and they're real you know, we had we had lady
Speaker 2: call us up one day when a beaver had come
Speaker 2: down and shoot down a tree in her backyard and
Speaker 2: her daughter's wedding was, you know, planned to be there
Speaker 2: that weekend. You know, underneath these trees they just drow.
Speaker 2: But it can also be a win for the environment
Speaker 2: because when we look at a lot of lands after
Speaker 2: the trappers came through, you know and just almost eliminated
Speaker 2: the beavers, they'd never recovered to that stage that they
Speaker 2: were prior to that, So there was still room on
Speaker 2: the landscape for more beavers. And we can take these
Speaker 2: beavers and we can move them up into those areas
Speaker 2: where they create these habitats that are great for you know,
Speaker 2: wildlife fish. But we're even finding ranchers out here are
Speaker 2: wanting beavers on their property because when they push that
Speaker 2: water out and they create more grass and more green
Speaker 2: not only from their pond, but also from the groundwater
Speaker 2: that is seeping out of those ponds and kind of
Speaker 2: widening out those riparian areas. That's just more feed for
Speaker 2: their sheep and their cattle. Also, one of the things
Speaker 2: that we have to do out here, when we get
Speaker 2: these big snowfalls, everything kind of just washes down quickly
Speaker 2: in the springtime, creating floods, creating issues in the spring.
Speaker 2: Then everything dries up during the summer. So the ranchers
Speaker 2: go out and they build stock ponds and then they
Speaker 2: do this a wild bike, two palm guzzlers. But when
Speaker 2: the spring runoff comes off and it washes out those
Speaker 2: burns that they built for these these ponds, you know,
Speaker 2: somebody's got to go back up there and fix it.
Speaker 2: In contrasts, you got beaber's up there and the spring
Speaker 2: runoff comes down and washes out one of their dams.
Speaker 2: Now the beaver fixes it. And not only that, but
Speaker 2: then they create three or more ponds form their upstream.
Speaker 2: So you know, it just makes sense that, you know,
Speaker 2: getting more beavers on the landscape, holding that water up,
Speaker 2: making it come down slower in the spring time, and
Speaker 2: preserving more of it up in our mountains through the
Speaker 2: summer is just really good for everybody.
Speaker 1: All right, So we have a much better idea of
Speaker 1: what a beaver can offer to a landscape. I'm now
Speaker 1: interested in how they got this program up and rolling.
Speaker 2: There was a student in one of the classes and
Speaker 2: him and his dad were trappers, and his dad owned
Speaker 2: a taxidermy store or whatever you call it in the
Speaker 2: valley here, and after taking the course, he started to
Speaker 2: talk to his dad and said, you know, we shouldn't
Speaker 2: be trapping out all these beavers. You know that they're
Speaker 2: really good for the other wildlife and habitat. And his
Speaker 2: dad was kind of like, well, you know, the guy
Speaker 2: that I'm trapping on, we don't trap him, He's going
Speaker 2: to have somebody else trap him out.
Speaker 1: This is one of the most interesting points in the
Speaker 1: whole story to me. A student who operated a taxi
Speaker 1: derby business with his father that were also both trappers
Speaker 1: that had been trapping beavers for years are the two
Speaker 1: individuals who originally thought of the idea to relocate due
Speaker 1: to the potential benefits that it would create for other wildlife.
Speaker 1: This idea led them to approaching the Utah Division of
Speaker 1: Wildlife Resources, who was excited about this notion because of
Speaker 1: the potential benefits it would make on the wildlife and
Speaker 1: the habitat, so they proceeded forward with it, which eventually
Speaker 1: led to Nate's initial involvement with the program.
Speaker 2: They asked me if I was interested in learning how
Speaker 2: to live trap, So I said, yeah, sure, you know,
Speaker 2: I want to give it a try. My background was
Speaker 2: really in wetlands, but I was interested in how the
Speaker 2: beavers created wetlands and that sort of thing and the
Speaker 2: benefits of that. So I went out with the student
Speaker 2: and his dad and and they kind of taught me
Speaker 2: how to trap, and we were sort of the blind
Speaker 2: leading the blind. They knew how to trap, but they
Speaker 2: didn't know much about live trapping. So we worked on it.
Speaker 2: We figured it out together. And then it turns out
Speaker 2: there was a guy at the Forest Service who was
Speaker 2: also kind of a respiration biologist who was interested in
Speaker 2: this stuff as well, and he was also a beaver trapper.
Speaker 2: So he got involved, We got involved with the State
Speaker 2: Wildlife that to try to come up with some ideas.
Speaker 2: She was the one who came up with the quarantine
Speaker 2: and some methods for kind of steading up our facility.
Speaker 2: And then that second year, I guess it was, Joe
Speaker 2: got together with me and he says, you know, I've
Speaker 2: been talking with the UDWR and they think that they
Speaker 2: want to get more trappers involved and bring on some
Speaker 2: people to do live trapping, but they want to kind
Speaker 2: of a certification program for them, you know, so they
Speaker 2: want to train them. And I thought that would be
Speaker 2: great because I could really use some more training. Like
Speaker 2: I said, we'd only caught five beavers the year before.
Speaker 2: Joe said, no, no, no, you're not getting it man, you're
Speaker 2: teaching the training. I was like, you gotta be kidding me.
Speaker 2: I'm only trapped five beavers. I can't do this. But
Speaker 2: that's how I kind of got started. They put me
Speaker 2: in contact with some people. There were some organizations in
Speaker 2: some tribes up in Washington and Oregon that were doing this,
Speaker 2: and so they put me in contact with some people there.
Speaker 2: They came down and helped me do the training, and
Speaker 2: the State Wildlife BET assisted with the training, and we
Speaker 2: expected to get a group of trappers from around Utah
Speaker 2: that would be interested in doing this live trapping. And
Speaker 2: one of the reasons was we were we were and
Speaker 2: still are paying the trappers one hundred dollars of beaver
Speaker 2: to live trap rather than lethal trap. But what ended
Speaker 2: up happening is we got a bunch of professionals from
Speaker 2: the wildlife agencies from all the surround states that were
Speaker 2: also interested in these kind of programs who wanted to
Speaker 2: learn more about it. So interesting we only got i
Speaker 2: think one trapper and two students from the university that
Speaker 2: took the training, and everyone else was professionals from surrounding areas.
Speaker 2: From that, you know that a lot of the other
Speaker 2: states and I shouldn't say base on their stuff on
Speaker 2: what we were doing, but we all kind of talked
Speaker 2: about things that we were doing and trying and what
Speaker 2: had worked and what hadn't. And so the training kind
Speaker 2: of just brought a bunch of people together to figure
Speaker 2: this out and what we should be doing to do
Speaker 2: these these relocations.
Speaker 1: So, as is common with many startups or new ideas,
Speaker 1: you're trying to figure out year one of this beaver
Speaker 1: lab trapping and relocating was a bit of a learning curve,
Speaker 1: only five beavers trapped in total, working with veterinarians to
Speaker 1: establish a quarantine protocol and trying to expand the program
Speaker 1: if possible. Well it must have worked because for the
Speaker 1: second year they were able to grow and get some
Speaker 1: trappers involved, with many of them being professionals from surrounding areas.
Speaker 1: We're going to learn more about this program and the
Speaker 1: ins and outs of it, but first I want to
Speaker 1: ask Nate about a very specific story that happened early
Speaker 1: on in the program's life and that yielded some pretty
Speaker 1: incredible results.
Speaker 2: There's a ranch and it's kind of where I first
Speaker 2: got started in all this up in Idaho, where the
Speaker 2: rancher realized that his stream hit a small intermittent string
Speaker 2: was going dry every spring, you know, after runoff it
Speaker 2: was basically gone. But he's an older guy and he
Speaker 2: remembered as a kid that that used to flow into
Speaker 2: the midsummer, you know, even in the late summer, and
Speaker 2: now every year it was going dry early spring. He thought,
Speaker 2: you know what, I remember there being beavers up there
Speaker 2: when I was a kid. Now we used to shoot them,
Speaker 2: you know, we used to get rid of them every
Speaker 2: chance we could could, you know, because we didn't we
Speaker 2: didn't want them around them block their irrigation canal. But
Speaker 2: we did a pretty good job because there's no more
Speaker 2: beavers up there. So he tried to relocate some in
Speaker 2: on his own, again probably you know, under the shade
Speaker 2: of darkness, but they didn't stick, they wouldn't stay in
Speaker 2: the area, they got killed, whatever. So at that point
Speaker 2: he came down and spoke with Joe Wheaton and Nick
Speaker 2: Klowas at the university about, you know, the possibility of
Speaker 2: getting beavers up there. And that was the very first
Speaker 2: beaver relocation project that I was involved in. And we
Speaker 2: took a few beavers up there, and this is after
Speaker 2: we had built the BDA's so the bdas create some
Speaker 2: little habitat for him, some deep water so they can
Speaker 2: hide from predators, and they stuck. Jumped forward a year
Speaker 2: or two and a few more beavers relocated up there.
Speaker 2: They start reproducing, and he had you know, fifty to
Speaker 2: one hundred beaver dams throughout the watershed. They'd really you know,
Speaker 2: did well. They protected them. And now we're probably nine
Speaker 2: ten years from there, and he has water flowing in
Speaker 2: that stream year long the ponds are now supporting fish
Speaker 2: that are big enough to catch, so his granddaughter is
Speaker 2: fishing out of the ponds, and moose have returned to
Speaker 2: the area that he hadn't seen for, you know, thirty years.
Speaker 2: So that's one really good example.
Speaker 1: Let's highlight those impacts again, just to make sure we
Speaker 1: don't miss anything from just the single action of reintroducing
Speaker 1: beavers to this particular property. There is now year round
Speaker 1: waterflow in that creek, there's ponds that are supporting small fishery,
Speaker 1: and moose have returned to the area in which beforehand
Speaker 1: the property owner hadn't seen them for over thirty years
Speaker 1: or so. Is it starting to become clear the impacts
Speaker 1: these beavers can make. It really is wild, which in
Speaker 1: turn made a lot of sense to me why Nate
Speaker 1: explained how the program grew so rapidly after.
Speaker 2: That that second year. You know, after we got five beavers,
Speaker 2: we got fifty. By the next year, we got one
Speaker 2: hundred beavers in that season. We've kind of hovered between
Speaker 2: fifty and seventy five beavers per season fairly consistently after that.
Speaker 2: Not last season, but the season before that, we had
Speaker 2: a really big runoff, and there was a lot of
Speaker 2: beavers we saw as roadkill, and we can't get as
Speaker 2: many beavers that year, but in general, you know, I
Speaker 2: think we average around sixty beavers per season. We've had
Speaker 2: such a good relationship with the trappers. That's one of
Speaker 2: the areas where I think the word has gotten out
Speaker 2: the most. And that's why I thought you should talk
Speaker 2: to Hoppy. He's he's not only a big time hunter
Speaker 2: and fisher and trapper, but he's just an interesting character.
Speaker 1: All that is some impressive growth. Five beavers in the
Speaker 1: first year, fifty in the second year, one hundred in
Speaker 1: year three, and now they average around sixty a year.
Speaker 1: And again, it's not really a shocker when the program
Speaker 1: is yielding the kind of results that it is. But
Speaker 1: now I'm gonna take Nate's advice and talk to this
Speaker 1: Hoppy fellow that he mentioned. And by the way, Night
Speaker 1: was not wrong. This guy is a character.
Speaker 3: Are you running traps right now?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I'm running traps right now.
Speaker 3: That's great.
Speaker 1: After giving the man some time to finish his traps,
Speaker 1: we got into the conversation are you running traps every day?
Speaker 3: Are you running the trap line every day to some extent?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I cause my main gig, we're due, Like I
Speaker 5: manage a buffalo and elk hunting ranch. So like our
Speaker 5: season ends like first week of December, So anywhere from
Speaker 5: first week of December all the way through even into
Speaker 5: the March, I'm running traps every single day anywhere from
Speaker 5: you know, one hundred to three hundred different sets, you know,
Speaker 5: just on a timeline where I'm just checking everything as
Speaker 5: the need be checked and trapping as many things as
Speaker 5: I possibly can.
Speaker 1: You know, it's clear this guy gets after it in
Speaker 1: terms of trapping. So now let zero in on the
Speaker 1: topic of trapping beavers specifically and learn how he got
Speaker 1: involved with the Beaver Relocation Collaborative.
Speaker 5: I've been trapping, man, I don't know, it's probably my teens,
Speaker 5: you know, sixteen seventeen range where I could actually drive
Speaker 5: myself around and get on some stuff. But you know,
Speaker 5: and that's kind of how I met Nate in the
Speaker 5: first place. Is I've been you know, I had lethal
Speaker 5: trapped beavers prior to hanging out with Nate and them
Speaker 5: and BRC. And then they kind of turned me, so say,
Speaker 5: into kind of being the full circle guy where I could,
Speaker 5: you know, lethal trap things and need to be lesal trapped,
Speaker 5: but I also live trap the beavers for them and
Speaker 5: kind of bring my knowledge of trapping into the relocation
Speaker 5: scene where they were recruiting people that wanted to be
Speaker 5: conservationists and recruiting people that like really wanted to be
Speaker 5: a part it, and trapping was like something that I
Speaker 5: think they needed more more help with, and then they
Speaker 5: had to spend more time, you know, getting those guys
Speaker 5: learning the ropes and trying to figure out where to
Speaker 5: have the sets and what it meant and whereas I
Speaker 5: kind of just knew, but then I had to kind
Speaker 5: of learn, you know, how to keep the well being
Speaker 5: of the animal in mind, and you know. Not that
Speaker 5: not to say that you don't do that in regular
Speaker 5: day trapping, but it's definitely more of a point to
Speaker 5: do that when you're trying to live trap and relocate
Speaker 5: stuff than when you're just trapping for fur or a
Speaker 5: nuisance type thing or anything of that sort.
Speaker 4: That makes sense.
Speaker 3: I'm not trying to paint the picture at all that
Speaker 3: I'm anti you know, lethal trapping beavers. There's plenty of
Speaker 3: instances where it comes up where that's perfectly okay to do.
Speaker 3: I just find it also interesting that there's some there's
Speaker 3: places like where you're at in Utah where live trap
Speaker 3: at them and take it them to areas to you know,
Speaker 3: re established wetlands or help with you know, help with
Speaker 3: the wetlands. Is just really, really, really interesting. So are
Speaker 3: you doing any lethal trapping of beavers anymore? Are you?
Speaker 3: Are you if you're trapping a beaver, are you live
Speaker 3: trapping it?
Speaker 2: These days?
Speaker 5: So I appreciate your perspective for sure, because I'm one
Speaker 5: hundred percent on that same page. Also where there's there's
Speaker 5: space in this world for both sides of that coin.
Speaker 5: There's space in the world for a lethal trap, and
Speaker 5: there's and there's a place in the world for the
Speaker 5: live trapping relocation and things like that. Right, So nowadays
Speaker 5: I'm definitely more along the lines of live trapping and
Speaker 5: relocating than I am actually lethal trapping the beavers, even
Speaker 5: though I do happen into a beaver here and there
Speaker 5: on my line, you know, where I'm running snares close
Speaker 5: to a river bottom or or just stuff like that
Speaker 5: just happens a lot of times.
Speaker 4: I'm trapping on a lot of private property over here too.
Speaker 5: I'm not doing a whole lot of public land trapping
Speaker 5: just because I've been so lucky to have access to
Speaker 5: a lot of stuff and I've I've seen where trap
Speaker 5: and can help them with the goals that they're trying
Speaker 5: to achieve with deer and turkeys and and things like that.
Speaker 5: So when it comes into the sense where I'm trapping
Speaker 5: on those private properties, like those people are irrigating and
Speaker 5: running the water to cows and running water to fields
Speaker 5: and things like that where they don't necessarily want them there.
Speaker 5: So that's where we can scratch each other's backs. Where
Speaker 5: I have those INDs, you know, I'm seeing them during
Speaker 5: trapping season, I'm seeing them where I can legally harvest
Speaker 5: them in a lethal way, right, But I keep the
Speaker 5: landowners in mind that they want a specific thing done.
Speaker 5: But at the same time, I think like, Okay, maybe
Speaker 5: I can save that come the summertime where we can
Speaker 5: get this thing relocated and then full circle moment help
Speaker 5: everybody out with you know, the relocation and the habitat work.
Speaker 4: And so it's just it's just.
Speaker 5: A deeper, meaning, deeper concept than just trapping that animal
Speaker 5: because it's plugging up a covert, or trapping that animal
Speaker 5: because it's falling trees or or anything like that where
Speaker 5: somebody else could use it to actually keep water or
Speaker 5: have water or you know, bring that water table up
Speaker 5: a little bit in this in that sense, right, so
Speaker 5: it has. It has flipped my mindset, you know, where
Speaker 5: I'm like, man, I could instead of just solving one problem,
Speaker 5: we can solve couple with just a little extra effort
Speaker 5: or a little bit you know, a little bit more,
Speaker 5: you know, thoughtfulness in that sense, right, you can. You
Speaker 5: can just think a little harder, think a little better,
Speaker 5: think a little smarter.
Speaker 1: I love getting perspective from guys like Hoppy on these
Speaker 1: kinds of issues. To me, they're as equally valuable as
Speaker 1: the perspective of the biologist. One thing I feel like
Speaker 1: we've learned and seen play out several times in this
Speaker 1: show is that often the success of any program initiative
Speaker 1: campaign set out in the name of benefiting wildlife often
Speaker 1: hinges upon biologists in the public being willing to work together,
Speaker 1: and Hoppy's involvement in this beaver relocation in Utah is
Speaker 1: a perfect example of this. To round this episod off,
Speaker 1: I want to ask him if he's been able to
Speaker 1: see some of the positive impacts from his relocated Beaver's firsthand.
Speaker 4: Absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 5: I actually, I actually was a part of a property
Speaker 5: that I didn't even know was a thing. Before I
Speaker 5: had even met BRC or net Nate or any of
Speaker 5: those guys. I had been hunting turkeys on a property.
Speaker 5: It was a property that was butted up to a
Speaker 5: bunch of public land, and I had been hunting turks
Speaker 5: on public land for forever. And then I'd met the
Speaker 5: guy that had come to one of our like relocation
Speaker 5: parties or those kinds of things, and then we got
Speaker 5: talked about turkeys, and then he was like, he's like, yeah,
Speaker 5: I live up there. And I'm like, oh, man, I
Speaker 5: know exactly where that is. And he's like, hey, come
Speaker 5: hunt turkeys on my place. It butted up right up
Speaker 5: against you know, the public or whatever. So I knew
Speaker 5: exactly where he was at. And I've been hunting turkeys
Speaker 5: on his place ever since. But his place, this creek
Speaker 5: runs right through his place, and it's just gorgeous habitat
Speaker 5: Big long Green Grass. In the springtime, you know, turkeys
Speaker 5: everywhere because there's just a lot of a lot of
Speaker 5: big woods meeting like kind of open fields and things
Speaker 5: like that. And we live in big high country too,
Speaker 5: where like six.
Speaker 4: Seven thousand feet he just had like great habitat.
Speaker 5: And then and then he got to explain to me
Speaker 5: that it never used to be that way until they
Speaker 5: started helping him out with the beaversion kind of getting
Speaker 5: them into that high country where where a lot of
Speaker 5: our water happens in the springtime, right runoff and things,
Speaker 5: and then we have super dry summers. And it was
Speaker 5: kind of hard for me to understand that it ever
Speaker 5: could have looked any different than what it did, because like,
Speaker 5: the turkeys in there were just so awesome, and you know,
Speaker 5: there's a lot of grouse all over there.
Speaker 4: And so that kind of brought a full circle to me.
Speaker 4: And that was actually.
Speaker 5: Pretty early on when I hadn't necessarily started live trapping
Speaker 5: for them, but I, you know, i'd kind of had
Speaker 5: the interest to, and so it kind of that kind
Speaker 5: of pushed it forward for me.
Speaker 4: Where I was like, this is actually possible.
Speaker 5: And obviously it took him quite a while to do that,
Speaker 5: because anything worth working for is probably gonna take take
Speaker 5: some time, but like, but I was like, man, that's
Speaker 5: so awesome. And then b r C has been doing
Speaker 5: some relocation and some some stuff with us through me
Speaker 5: through some of my private private property access as well.
Speaker 5: And obviously we're kind of in the early stages there,
Speaker 5: but we're already starting to see some beavers kind of
Speaker 5: get established, kind of in the.
Speaker 4: Lower parts of where we're at.
Speaker 5: Obviously we want to kind of keep moving higher, but
Speaker 5: it you know, we'll take them where we can get them,
Speaker 5: but we're already starting to see some progress there too,
Speaker 5: So that's super super cool. And I think in places
Speaker 5: like down south areas where like there's excess water, you
Speaker 5: guys have these rainstorms that come in and they don't
Speaker 5: you know, they don't six to eight inches at a time,
Speaker 5: whereas we have like six to eight inches of annual precipitation,
Speaker 5: where we we know what we've got and we've got
Speaker 5: to keep it.
Speaker 4: And so the.
Speaker 5: Beaver's definitely formed more of a functional part of the
Speaker 5: world here than I think they have in different parts
Speaker 5: of the world.
Speaker 4: Of course, right, that's kind of why we're doing what
Speaker 4: we're doing.
Speaker 5: But they were always they've always been here, right, They've
Speaker 5: always been here, and they should be here, and just
Speaker 5: bring them back to places where they have been where
Speaker 5: they should be is just cool to see, right.
Speaker 1: I definitely think it's cool to see the North American
Speaker 1: beaver a keystone species, an ecological engineer, a critter that
Speaker 1: can transform a landscape like no other creature in the
Speaker 1: animal kingdom, a nuisance sometimes sure, a critical piece of
Speaker 1: the ecosystem that benefits wildlife and wild places, water quality,
Speaker 1: and humans as well. You better believe it. Be sure
Speaker 1: to check out the Beaver Ecology and Relocation Collaborative at
Speaker 1: Utah State. They really are doing some cool work. Heck,
Speaker 1: Nate told me that he even figured out how to
Speaker 1: transport beaver's on horseback. That's something our friend Elmo was
Speaker 1: never able to do. They've got some pretty cool videos
Speaker 1: on their social media as well at the Natural Resources
Speaker 1: at USU if you want to check them out. I
Speaker 1: want to thank all of you for listening to Backwoods University,
Speaker 1: as well as Clay's Bear Grease and Brent's This Country Life.
Speaker 1: It means a whole whole lot to all of us.
Speaker 1: And if you enjoyed this episode, share it with a
Speaker 1: friend this week and stick around because we're just getting started.
Speaker 1: There's a whole lot more on the way.