Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont internship, for The Charlotte News
CHARLOTTE — Residents and biologists converged at the Hinesburg Town Hall on April 12 for a battle council. Biologist Skip Lisle and naturalist Patti Smith spearheaded the meeting, running a presentation on enemy hideouts, damage tolls and new weaponry to launch a counterattack.
The enemy in question: beavers. The ongoing battle stems from the inability to balance dam construction from beavers and people alike.
Beavers have been a nuisance to Vermont’s hydrology systems, accruing damages in flooding and infrastructure repairs, but remain a vital steward of the state’s wetland habitats. That’s why the Hinesburg Conservation Commission and the Vermont Beaver Collective, co-hosted “Beavers, Beavers, Beavers” to discuss more sustainable ways of parlaying with the semiaquatic rodents.
“Their habitats have tremendous value, so we want to try to fully exploit the values of beavers for the benefit of society and the natural world,” Lisle said. “But the only way we can do that is if we protect the infrastructure. We’re really kind of at war with beavers.”
Beavers are considered both a keystone species and an ecosystem engineer because of the way they transform the landscape.
In Vermont, beaver dams create wetlands that filter pollutants before they reach Lake Champlain, slow floodwaters and provide habitat for many species. The longer a beaver wetland exists, the more diverse and beneficial it becomes, according to the Vermont Land Trust.
Patti Smith, a wildlife rehabilitator, highlighted some of those benefits in a video detailing two decades of her observations on the species. Smith raised orphaned baby beavers during the COVID-19 pandemic and said that beavers exhibit “playful and intelligent” behavior while building their dams.
“Beavers confer a whole host of benefits that make our world more livable for everybody and everything,” said Bob Hyams, a member of Hinesburg’s conservation commission. “Beavers make Vermont more resilient to the impact of climate change.”
Despite their size, however, beavers can create some big collateral damage. Beavers can build up to 35 feet of dam in a week, according to the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, and that construction can plug culverts, overflow streambeds and damage state-owned dams.
This often leads to trapping and extermination efforts. Vermont officials proposed killing beavers outright in April 2025, the Agency of Natural Resources targeting beavers in 21 different dam sites.
Lisle testified against that decision on April 10, 2025, in the House Committee on Environment and Energy, citing the financial and ecological costs of failed removal operations.
During the event, Lisle instead advocated for further implementation of the beaver deceiver, a device he designed to deal with beavers non-lethally. Lisle founded Beaver Deceivers International in 2001 and has implemented the devices across North America and parts of Europe.
“We spent years just building something, ripping it out, rebuilding it and the stakes were too high to ever give up,” Lisle said.
Each device is tailored to the physical characteristics of each dam site, and Lisle demonstrated their basic structure during his presentation.
A long pipe runs near the surface of the water and is covered with a square-shaped, fenced-in filter. The filter muffles the water flow as it runs through the pipe, subduing the sound that hinders beavers from continuing to build, Lisle said.
The devices allow water to keep flowing while the beavers are tricked into believing they’ve completed a job well done, while the beaver deceiver regulates water levels and damming behavior in a way that preserves the beavers’ habitats.
The Fish and Wildlife Department has installed more than 300 beaver baffles, devices similar to the beaver deceivers, across 3,000 acres of wetland habitat to protect beavers and minimize their damage, too.
Bev Soychak, co-founder of the Vermont Beaver Association, encouraged community members to consider flow devices similar to the beaver deceiver rather than trapping, emphasizing that it’s possible to coexist with their wood-chucking neighbors.
“We’re here to encourage beavers to be able to thrive in their environments because of their benefits,” Soychak said. “Instead of killing that beaver, call us and let us do a beaver deceiver, and then you can build around it.”