ENHS Nature Trails February 2003 Article 3

Interesting Ways in Eastern Forest Management

I thought this not only very interesting but just too ironical to pass up. Conservationists go about their business all wrong, they have to learn to make a business out of conservation that the public consumer demands. - Ed.

May 21, 2002
By James P. Sterba, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

OXFORD, Mass. -- Don LaFountain stopped his pickup beside a beaver swamp along Route 12 opposite a Wal-Mart and tossed out two traps that look like wire-mesh suitcases. He baited and set the traps, lowering them into water not 15 feet from the buzzing morning traffic.

An affable 50-year-old who wears a beard and an earring, he worked quickly, trying not to be noticed. Trappers have felt unwelcome in Massachusetts since 1996, when most of their leg-hold and body-gripping traps were outlawed as cruel. That's when Mr. LaFountain stopped calling himself a tapper and started calling himself a "wildlife-damage-control professional."

The difference? A trapper gets less than $20 for a beaver pelt. Mr. LaFountain gets $150 to remove a "problem beaver," or $750 to take out a typical family of five. Or, for $700 to $1,000, he'll install flood-control piping so the beavers can stay.

It's not just an out-of-control white-tailed deer population that people increasingly love to hate. The wildlife wars are escalating as other wild animal populations soar and damage complaints mount. Nowhere are the battles as rancorous as in the eastern third of the United States, a region whose image of end-to-end metropolises ringed with industrial belts, malls and traffic jams belies the comeback over many decades of the Eastern forest.

"Most Easterners don't realize it, but they live in a huge forest," says Gordon Batcheller, a New York State wildlife biologist. "I flew from Albany to Boston recently, and it's woods from one downtown to the other. But when you get down into it, you see it's full of people."

And wild animals. Indeed, it's probable, say some biologists and foresters, that more people live in closer proximity to more wild animals in the Eastern U.S. today than at any time in history anywhere on the planet.

"Certainly for North America it's hard to imagine a situation in which more people and more animals live in closer contact," says David R. Foster, a Harvard University biologist and director of the Harvard Forest, a 3,000-acre preserve near Petersham, Mass.

While many smaller animals such as squirrels, raccoons and opossums never left, Dr. Foster says that large animals and birds are now making big comebacks: bear, moose, coyotes, beavers, turkeys, eagles, osprey and the ubiquitous deer. One reason is that the comeback of the forest has afforded them habitat and protection. At the same time, people who live in sprawling leafy suburbs offer them safety and lots of food.

It is a wildlife-damage-control professional's dream come true.

Mr. LaFountain specializes in beavers, which abound in the Bay State. Their population has tripled since 1996 to 70,000 and counting, say wildlife officials -- more beavers than when Paul Revere made his midnight ride in 1775. When they flood driveways, inundate septic systems, threaten to contaminate wells or gnaw down prized trees, Mr. LaFountain's phone rings.

His voice mail also fills with pleas for help against attic-dwelling squirrels, chimney-nesting raccoons, garden-chomping deer and lawn-fouling geese -- not to mention Dumpster-diving bear and the occasional itinerant moose.

Hundreds of companies such as Mr. LaFountain's, in Florence, Mass., have sprung up to get in on the hundreds of millions of dollars now spent annually dealing with nuisance wildlife that were once harvested as a renewable resource. The biggest, Critter Control Inc. of Traverse City, Mich., has sold 90 franchises since 1987 and operates 20 more, says founder Kevin Clark. Combined, the company's outlets grossed $19.6 million last year. Its franchisee in Fort Lauderdale has 20 employees operating 17 trucks.

Wildlife controllers work for homeowners, corporations, utilities, railroads, highway departments and local governments. Sharpshooters contract to kill suburban deer. Teams with dogs work on-call shooing geese off golf courses. Some operators have graduated from backyard mole control to road-kill removal and disposal contracts. Many make money from so-called Discovery Channel suburbanites, or people three generations removed from rural life who are terrified when a wild animal turns up.

The great Eastern forest has been coming back since the middle of the 19th century. It's not all back and it's not the same forest. But about 70% of the land that was forested in 1600 is forest again today, says Douglas W. MacCleery, a senior policy analyst with the U.S. Forest Service. That's about 737 million acres -- nearly two-thirds of it in the eastern third of the nation. While some replanting was done, especially in the South, most of the Eastern forest grew back naturally.

Some states in the Northeast have been regaining their forest since the Erie Canal opened up the Midwest and farmers moved to better cropland there. Left untended, abandoned farmland reverts to forests in a matter of decades. Massachusetts and Connecticut -- once a virtually unbroken sea of trees -- had lost 70% of their forests by the Civil War. Today, nearly two-thirds of their land is covered with trees. Similarly deforested, Vermont is now 80% woods, New Hampshire 90%. New York, only 25% forest in 1880, is 66% forest today.

Between 1907 and 1997, the Forest Service reported, 12 states in the Northeast, among them the most densely populated in the nation, regained almost 26 million acres of forest.

But reforestation alone can't account for wildlife population explosions. Historically, wildlife was managed for good or ill, first by Native Americans, then by European settlers, then farmers and state fish-and-game agencies.

Mr. MacCleery notes that, contrary to the myth of early forests as ancient, impenetrable and static, they were shaped relentlessly by both nature and man. In the 8,000 years since forests advanced north before retreating glaciers, Native Americans, most living in fixed villages, shaped both woods and wildlife.

European exploitation and market hunting decimated American wildlife, leaving many species -- bison, deer, elk, turkey, waterfowl, among them -- endangered or near extinction by the end of the 19th century, when the modern conservation ethic was born. That's when state and federal wildlife agencies pioneered the comeback of game animals, their populations enhanced by forbidding hunting and trapping, then regulating it with adjustable seasons and licenses.

Through this period and well into the 20th century, farm families managed wildlife. They hunted and trapped predatory animals and birds both to protect domestic animals and to encourage the growth of game birds such as pheasants. By clearing the land and keeping it clear, farmers maintained tens of millions of acres of cropland and pasture that buffered townsfolk from forest. Those vast open belts are now mostly gone, grown up in trees and invaded by sprawl.

"People used to live on the land and off the land," says Dr. Foster at the Harvard Forest. "Today the land is a backdrop."

Many suburbanites are managing wildlife without consciously knowing it -- with far different consequences this time around. By mowing lawns, planting gardens, putting out the trash and hanging birdfeeders, they're serving up succulent buffets. Deer, for instance, love manicured gardens and grass, and bears gravitate to all sorts of backyard delicacies, from garbage to birdseed.

"People around here know that you don't put out a bird feeder when bears aren't hibernating," says Dr. Foster. "Or they'll be into it." The Bay State's 3,000 black bears are increasing 8% to 10% annually, he says.

By keeping out hunters as unsafe and trappers as inhumane, suburbanites unknowingly favor some species, such as deer, over others, like songbirds.

"The exploding population of white-tailed deer nationwide has helped drive a number of bird species onto Audubon's WatchList, a system that identifies at-risk bird species before they become endangered," writes David Seideman, editor of the National Audubon Society magazine. . . ." (Will be continued in March)

By defoliating underforest, deer remove bird habitat. In its March issue, under the headline, "Wanted: More Hunters," Audubon magazine charged that deer were "laying waste to entire ecosystems," saying: "There is only one solution."

Unlike these so-called subsidized animals, or "welfare wildlife," beavers are largely indifferent to man. They are another 20th century wildlife-restoration success story turning into a 21st century nuisance-animal nightmare, but with a twist.

Beavers never really had a chance to be neighbors of the European colonists. Roving trappers decimated them long before the newcomers began settling into beaver territory. They were North America's first money animal. Selling beaver pelts to Europe was New York's first business.

Beaver felt hats were a mainstay of European male fashion for 300 years. When European beavers were gone and Russian beavers got scarce, American beavers filled the void. The rodent was so important to the New York economy that two beavers were put on the city's official seal. The beaver became New York State's official animal and a Canadian national symbol.

Beavers were everywhere. How many? Nobody knows. Guesses range from 50 million to 400 million, continent-wide, in 1600. They were easy to find and catch. Virtually all the coastal plain beavers between Maine and the Carolinas were caught and sold to the Manhattan Dutch by 1650. They were all but gone east of the Appalachians by 1700, virtually extinct in Massachusetts by 1750.

For the next 80 years, trappers pushed west. By 1830, they were cleaning out the last beavers west of the Rocky Mountains when a market collapse saved the noble rodent. Actually, nutria and silk saved it. Hatters discovered a cheaper felt made from another aquatic rodent, the South American nutria. At the same time, hats made of Oriental silk became fashionable.

State wildlife agents began live-trapping remnant beavers from isolated pockets and relocating them into their former habitats at the end of the 19th century. Between 1901 and 1907, New York moved 34 beavers into the Adirondacks. Without predators, these original 34 resettlers -- reproducing at a rate of between 3 and 5 kits annually -- multiplied to around 15,000 by 1915. In 1928, they spilled over into Massachusetts.

Today, beavers number an estimated 15 million to 25 million in Canada and the U.S., existing in every state and province. (Alligators have kept them out of peninsular Florida.) Without serious predation elsewhere, state wildlife agencies have licensed trappers and adjusted trapping seasons to keep populations in check.

As beavers rebounded, people discovered that they share some human preferences in real estate. A wood lot with a stream running through it is prime property for both.

Beavers need running water and trees. Biologists call them "keystone species" because they are industrious landscape architects that chew down trees, build dams, create ponds and wetlands habitat for countless other species. While wetlands are now called the rain forests of the North for promoting diversity, and "kidneys of the earth" for filtering and sediment-collecting, they were nuisances to early settlers who drained and cleared them without beavers around to complain.

Later, roads, rail lines, highways, sewer systems, electrical-transmission towers and sprawling housing developments were built into and across prime beaver habitat with little or no thought of the beaver's return.

The sound of running water triggers in a beaver "compulsive damming disorder," Mr. LaFountain says. They're genetically compelled to create a pond that will protect them from predators, mainly wolves, which don't yet re-exist in the East. Few other predators will take on North America's largest rodent, Castor canadensis, which can weigh 60 or 70 pounds. On land, they lumber about and are vulnerable. In water, they're torpedoes.

As their populations grew, state wildlife agencies counted on trappers to keep their populations in check. But fur prices declined as substitutes such as fleece made out of plastic took hold. Animal-rights campaigners damped fur's demand by portraying trapping as inhumane. Trapping was reduced to hobby status for the most part.

In 1991, the European Union decided to ban fur imports from countries that allowed leg-hold traps -- threatening the American fur industry: Three-fourths of its $1.5 billion in sales ended up as finished products sold to Europe. The ban was repeatedly postponed, but the fur market continued to suffer.

In 1996, an animal-welfare coalition called ProPAW (Protect Pets and Wildlife), led by the Humane Society of the U.S., a Washington-based fund-raising group, and the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MSPCA), organized and funded a Bay State ballot initiative around the theme: Ban Cruel Traps. They spent heavily on media ads. One showed a dog with one leg missing, another, a cat writhing in a leg-hold trap.

Although the state's Division of Fisheries and Wildlife said the initiative would result in bad game management, Question #1, the Wildlife Protection Act, passed by a two-to-one margin. It banned leg-hold and body-gripping traps called Conibears, and bear hunting with dogs. The National Audubon Society, which generally favors trapping to save rare birds from predators, described the ban in its magazine this way:

"The 'cruel' Conibears, which cost $18 each, weighed two pounds, and killed instantly, have been replaced by 'humane' 25-pound live traps that cost $250 each and hold the terrified animals for hours until they can be bashed on the head and thrown away."

Trappers killed around 2,000 beavers annually in Massachusetts before the ban, less than 100 after it. Soon state wildlife agents were inundated with beaver complaints: flood problems for the most part. The trapping season was extended. It didn't help.

"Beavers Driving Ipswich Batty," screamed a Boston Globe headline last August. "Roads, Backyards, Trail Being Flooded."

By 1998, state wildlife agents were spending the bulk of their time investigating beaver complaints. To relieve them, the state legislature delegated beaver problems to the state's 351 municipal boards of health -- but didn't give them any money to do the job. Tasked normally with worrying about such issues as clean water and measles outbreaks, they became responsible for issuing permits to trap problem beavers out of season. Some did. Some didn't.

Now, lots of people in rural areas tend to use an alternative to trapping called "high-speed lead poisoning," otherwise known as shooting. As for suburbanites, they have little choice but to turn to beaver-control firms -- some of which charge eye-popping prices.

"I've heard of $1,000-plus site visits," says Chrissie Henner, the wildlife department's fur bearer project leader.

"It's outrageous," says Stephanie Hagopian, the MSPCA's "living with wildlife" program coordinator. "When people pay that and get no long-term solution, they start to hate the animals."

She says people have much to learn about living around wild animals. But if they can't, Mr. LaFountain is her idea of a model wildlife controller. He's trained, certified, insured and doesn't trap beaver out of season without first getting permission from local authorities. Moreover, she says, he's sensitive to the stress of both the animals he's removing and the customers who hire him.

"A big part of the job is assuaging the fear and/or guilt of the people who called to solve the problem," says Mr. Noonan, the Wildlife Control Technology editor. "Many are in denial."

Mr. LaFountain uses 11 suitcase-like traps called Hancocks and two similar Baileys. This spring he joined forces with Ruth Callahan, a critical-care nurse who confronted him as a beaver trapper years ago, then founded her own company, Beaver Solutions, in Hadley, selling flooding mitigation systems. Together, they hope to earn $100,000 this year, half of it from problem beavers.

They trap beavers alive, transfer them to holding pens and haul them away. Most people don't want to know what happens next or assume that the beavers are simply relocated. But if they ask, Mr. LaFountain tells them. In many states, including Massachusetts, it is illegal to relocate animals because they are simply invading another animal's territory and don't survive. Relocations can also spread disease.

So what he does is follow the MSPCA guidelines for humane euthanasia. And that's where many modern suburbanites prefer to end the story -- on a word that sounds good and allows them to feel at peace with their war on nature.

Mr. LaFountain performs euthanasia with a .22-caliber pistol -- one shot through the top of the skull. The fur isn't worth his time to remove and sell, so he freezes the dead beavers and gives them to a trapper. The trapper skins the beavers and sells their pelts on the international market, where they wind up as fur coats in China and Russia. He gives Mr. LaFountain homemade scent lures made from the beavers' castor glands in return.

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