Dam The Beavers!

By Paul Homewood  

 

 

More on them damn beavers!

 

The story I mentioned yesterday, regarding the letter sent about a beaver dam, appears to have been doing the round of the internet for quite some time! The story actually originates in 1998 in Michigan (rather than Pennsylvania, which it seems to have mutated into.)

The other change is that, although the letter was sent to Ryan DeVries, the reply was from the actual owner, a certain Mr Tvedten.

Other than that, though, the story is genuine, and was reported at the time in 1998 by the Wall Street Journal.

 

Intriguingly, there was also an article in the the Michigan news outlet, Michigan Capitol Confidential in 2010, written by Russ Harding, who was Director of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality in 1998:

 

While I was director of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, an e-mail exchange between the department and a Michigan landowner in late 1997 and early 1998 made quite a stir as it circulated around the Internet. A dam was being constructed over a stream on private property — a dam built by beavers. For awhile, this didn’t seem to matter to local state regulators, who insisted that those building dams over streams in Michigan must have a permit. Although I was not aware of the department’s misguided attempt at regulating beavers until it was picked up in the media, the landowner’s clever rebuttal brought a smile to my face.

The DEQ’s note and the landowner’s reply are reprinted at below, and are still widely available on the Internet and often circulated (in various altered forms) via e-mail chains.

Unfortunately, I must admit, I was not surprised by this incident. Most, but not all, of the state’s environmental regulators have a guilty-until-proven-innocent approach to enforcing the state’s many complicated environmental laws.

I have direct experience working as a natural resource and environmental regulator for the states of Alaska, Arizona, Missouri and Michigan. Of those, my experience is that environmental regulators in Michigan generally have the most negative view of those whom they regulate. This attitude hurts the state’s economy, fosters ill will from its residents, and often leads to environmental degradation rather than improvement.

Businesses and individuals who fear regulators often hide from them rather than attempting to voluntarily cooperate. It is common knowledge that all too often a landowner or developer in Michigan fires up a bulldozer under the cover of night and fills a wetland rather then attempt to legally obtain a permit from a hostile bureaucracy.

The zeal of Michigan environmental regulators in enforcing environmental regulations is not just confined to developers, as I discovered while serving as director of Michigan State Parks. The state park near Bay City was in serious decline during the early 1990s due to the accumulation of algae on the beach, rendering it unusable to visitors. I was informed by wetland regulators that they now considered the beach a regulated wetland (apparently a few reeds had sprouted during the period the beach was not groomed) and I needed a wetland permit in order to remove muck.

Unless state environmental regulators start utilizing some common sense in the enforcement of state environmental laws, these beavers in the story below will not be the last ones threatened with fines.

http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/12635

 

The article also reprints both letters.