Jason Blevins

Outdoors/Business Reporter

Sneak Peek of the Week

CPW seeks to balance benefits of beavers with updated management, conservation plan

60,000 to 90,000

Estimated number of beavers in the Southern Rockies

It wasn’t that long ago that OG ranchers would blast beaver dams with dynamite. The old-timers saw the largest rodent in North America as a nuisance, flooding fields and clogging waterways.

Now though, there’s a shifting view on beavers. They are “nature’s engineers, hydrologists and biochemists,” says Sam Pierce, a Stanford University Ph.D. candidate whose ranching ancestors in the Gunnison Valley were dam blasters. Despite the benefits of beavers , they are still not universally welcomed on ranchland where irrigation and water rights are meticulously managed.

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