Animal welfare group receives grant to promote beaver management

July 202, 2024  |  By Brenna Galdenzi

Father beaver and kit. Windham County, Vermont. July 2024. Courtesy photo

Ever since Vermont nonprofit Protect Our Wildlife first began in 2015, promoting coexistence with beavers has been a priority. 

This has involved education through public presentations, distributing informational brochures at events, testifying to the legislature, fielding inquiries from landowners and municipalities, and funding the installation of high-quality flow devices to protect against beaver damage. 

Protect Our Wildlife has funded measures worth tens of thousands of dollars across the state in an effort to protect beavers, wetlands and infrastructure. Now the organization has recently been awarded a two-year $40,000 grant from the Maine Community Foundation to expand this work. 

“Beavers are a keystone species who create wetlands that provide habitat for other wildlife and that also help combat the effects of climate change," said Protect Our Wildlife board member John Aberth, a wildlife rehabilitator who specializes in beavers. "Funding non-lethal solutions to human-beaver conflicts allows beavers to coexist and continue their hard work that benefits all of us.”

Vermont is not immune to the effects of climate change and beavers may assist in mitigating some of the risks, including regulating stream flows. The importance of beavers on our landscapes has been written about extensively in both scientific literature and the media, including the New York Times. 

The next step is identifying locations where people are committed to non-lethal measures addressing beaver activity that may benefit from flow devices, wrapping trees, and other coexistence practices.

Conservation biologist Jennifer Lovett of Stamford, Vermont is author of “Beavers Away!” a children’s book that tells the true story of a beaver relocation project in Idaho that involved parachutes. A Protect Our Wildlife board member, Lovett said the group will work with Skip Lisle from the Beaver Deceivers manufacturer and private landowners and municipalities “who are tired of the trap-kill-repeat loop, which never solves the problem.”

To learn more, email info@protectourwildlifevt.org.

Brenna Galdenzi is president Protect Our Wildlife VT.