The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Beaver video shows cutest dispute over stick
Fact: There are about 8,000 beavers in the state of Connecticut.
Folks in New Haven or Bridgeport or Norwalk might not think of their state as a place for beavers — they live in Canada, right? — but Matthew Male knows otherwise.
“There are beaver dams everywhere now,” he said. “It’s just a matter of going to a beaver area. When the sun goes down the beavers come out.”
Male, who describes himself as ”a biologist sort of ” — he has a degree in biology and works for the American Museum of Natural History, as well as for the Audubon Shop in Madison — managed to catch some beaver video Tuesday, and it’s right out of Animal Planet. The video shows one beaver munching on what must be a particularly tasty stick. Then another, presumably more important beaver comes along, ousts the first beaver and takes ownership of the stick.
“I just happened upon them,” Male said. “The video was through a spotting scope. The beavers were maybe 20 feet away.”
The video was taken in Male’s hometown of Chester, but he’s seen them all over the area.
For example, on the way to the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam. “There’s a big lodge there,” Male said. “At least in this part of Connecticut there’s beaver dams everywhere.”
There were few to no beavers in Connecticut in 1900, their forests cleared and population killed for pelts in the 1800s, according to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
Then, in 1914, a pair of beavers was released in Union, Connecticut.
Combined with habitat and population restoration efforts in both New York and Connecticut, the beaver population blossomed. The state now estimates somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000 individuals — so many in fact that their dams are known to cause flooding and other problems.
“The problems beavers can cause fall into two main categories, tree cutting and flooding,” according to the DEEP. “In some cases, beaver activity can threaten property, agricultural crops, or public health and safety.”
Anecdotally, Male said he believes the beaver population is doing well, and the DEEP said it “responds to hundreds of complaints related to beaver activity.”