Beavers in the news

Our reigning Beaver Queen, Yogi Beaver, forwards this article from the Denver Post, which i missed when it was first published last year:

"I love that smell. Don't you just love it? Nothing smells better to me," says Sherri Tippie, inhaling deeply. "I was born for beavers."

As Colorado's lone licensed live trapper and relocator of beavers, the opinionated part-time jail barber from Lakewood has become a legend among beaver lovers. For 22 years, she has battled stereotypes - and centuries of history - that paint beavers as water-hoarding pests worth more as soft hats than wild animals. Tippie has relocated several hundred, maybe even a thousand of the industrious, family-centric creatures.

She traps the engineering animals in metro Denver's urban streams and releases them in rural areas where their labor is appreciated for creating wetlands, raising water tables, restoring silty top soil and cleaning water.

"We need to change people's perceptions," Tippie says, slapping her leg in frustration. "Too many people today have a golf-course mentality. Water goes here. Flowers here. Grass here. Trees there. It goes against nature. We've spent too long working against nature."

And her beloved beavers, she says, support "nature's dance."

"When people complain about beavers, they don't know enough about them," she says, nearly screaming over the din of Bubba's laboring engine. "They are the most important wilderness species out there and they are the most degraded. If you want to control the beaver, control their food supply. It's as simple as wrapping trees."

. . .

Soon after delivering those first Aurora beavers to Rocky Mountain National Park, Tippie found herself one of the nation's leading live trappers and relocators of beavers. Today, the group she formed in 1987, Wildlife 2000, is one of the few resources for anyone seeking an option beyond killing dam-building beavers.

She travels the West, speaking to groups and advocating live trapping. She promotes wrapping trees to control a beaver colony's food supply. She installs steel cages over culverts where beavers like to build their lodges and dams, allowing a beaver family to thrive without disrupting water flow. She shows devices known as "beaver deceivers" - pipes snaked beneath a beaver dam allowing water to continue moving downstream while leaving the beaver pond intact.

After trapping her beavers, she rushes them to beaver-savvy ranchers and public land managers across the state. In the winter, she lines up homes for her beavers long before she sets her first traps in late June.

Tippie's fight for the beaver rakes against history. French beaver trappers forged the American West. Beaver pelts anchored this fledgling country's economy after demand for soft beaver hats soared in Europe, where the animals were trapped into near extinction in the early 1700s.

The history stacked against beavers and the ingrained mindset toward trapping and killing the animals does not faze Tippie. One beaver at a time, and one person at a time, she pursues a new world where beavers and people coexist happily.

"She has a big history up in this valley," Holschuh says, describing the stories of Tippie hauling beavers on mules deep into the Sangre de Christo range. "If people like Sherri would come and educate us, we could really do some good for the environment up here."

Sherri Tippie is an honorary Beaver Queen in my book. You can celebrate the contribution to our ecosystem made by beavers at the 4th Annual Beaver Queen Pageant on Saturday, June 7th, at the Duke Park meadow. Pre-pageant kids activities from 5 - 6 pm, and the pageant will get under way with a rousing entry featuring the Scene of the Crime Rovers at 6 pm sharp.