(ambient music) - [Narrator] In 2023, a new family moved in near the Allen Brook Nature Trail by my house on Wildflower Circle.

I didn't see a moving truck.

There was no welcome wagon, nor did I bring them a casserole.

I never saw the family during the day, but at night, teeth gnashing, tree chopping, and tail slapping.

(crickets chirping) Oh, what a racket.

By the way, did I mention they were Castor canadensis?

Beavers.

(ambient music) (crickets chirping) (gentle music) The Allen Brook Nature Trail where I hike was changing due to the beavers.

By November, the trail become a series of flooded footpaths and down trees.

Was this a bad thing or a good thing?

I didn't know.

My knowledge about beavers was very limited.

I could sum up beavers in six words.

Big teeth, wet feet, flat tail.

What was I missing?

I needed to find out more about my new neighbors.

(crickets chirping) (ambient music) - My name is Simon Myles, I'm the conservation planner of the town of Williston.

A large part of my work involves working with the town's Conservation Commission.

They are a body of seven highly motivated residents who live in town.

We work with them to advise town departments and other town boards on the town's natural resources, and we also work to promote open space and the conservation of land.

In terms of becoming aware of when these beavers started becoming more noticeable, we've known that there are beavers on the Allen Brook Nature Trail, which is our own town-owned nature trail that knits together a lot of residential neighborhoods in Williston.

And we also extended the trails out onto sort of common HOA land.

So specifically, last year we became aware of them upper sort of the northern end near Wildflower Circle and Keystone Drive.

Sort of August time when we noticed some of our punching and punching is sort of rudimentary trail structure, which is just some planks of wood bolted together to get people out of mud.

Started becoming sort of inundated.

So we thought something might be up.

At that time of year, the nature trail is heavily vegetated so it's virtually impossible to see anything.

So we did have exploration and discovered a beaver dam nearby, which was causing the waters back up.

Later on we did notice them down by the boardwalk.

So that's the central school end of the nature trail and when we started to see their take shape down there.

- [Narrator] This Allen Brook kerfuffle between the beavers and the Willistonians is the latest chapter in a long story between the two.

Let's just say there is some history.

(ambient music) - I'm Laura Meyer, I volunteer on the Williston Conservation Commission for the town of Williston.

About 13,000 years ago when the glaciers, which were two miles high over Vermont were retreating, which just means melting out of Vermont, Indigenous People were able to come into the area.

And at the time that Indigenous People were making their way across the country, there were paleo megafauna.

And all that means there were large mammals and one of those large mammals was a giant beaver.

This was a beaver that was as big as a bear.

I'm sure they came into contact with it.

35 species of paleo megafauna went extinct such as the mammoth, the giant beaver, giant ground sloths.

And we don't know, but there is a correlation with the time that people first came and the extinction of these animals.

Before Europeans came into first contact with the Indigenous People that were here, beavers were everywhere.

There were a lot more wetlands when beavers were here.

They were on every river, multiple dams on every river, beavers up and down every river in the United States, North America.

- My name's Tyler Brown, I'm a wildlife specialist with Vermont Fish and Wildlife, and I oversee the department's Beaver Wetlands Conservation Project.

There was about a hundred year period where there were no beavers in Vermont because there were extricated due to unregulated take and habitat loss.

Vermont went from 90 to 95% forest to about 30% forest in the 1800s and it really impacted what species could live here, including beavers.

- My name is Terry Marron, and I'm a member of the Conservation Commission, a member of the Catamount Community Forest Committee, and I'm also a master naturalist.

Once the Europeans came and trapped the beavers out, we started building our infrastructure in their homes.

And slowly, the beavers came back and that's when the conflicts started happening.

(ambient music) - [Narrator] After weeks of trying to film a beaver by the Wildflower Circle, Keystone Drive, Nature Trail bridge, I finally got one on video.

It was November 28th at dusk.

I was so excited, my hands were trembling as I tried to focus the lens.

To my surprise, the beaver was graceful as it swam back and forth in the brook.

FYI, November's Full moon is called the beaver moon.

Was this a sign?

(ambient music) (lighthearted music) - During the winter time and when the vegetation is down, you can really get a great view of how beavers work.

You can see their lodges, you can see their dams, and you can see the beaver ponds they've created all really easily from our trail.

So it's a real educational experience.

I've definitely learned a lot from it.

(ambient music) (wind whooshing) (gentle music) - Unfortunately, because beavers make wetlands and the wetlands had dried up and were gone and roads, infrastructure houses were built where beavers would normally have a floodplain, it is a problem in some places for beavers to come back.

- So the Beaver Wetlands Conservation Project was started in 2000 by Vermont Fish and Wildlife.

It's a project that provides onsite technical assistance to landowners, towns, and road crews, pretty much anybody who's having issues with beavers.

The goal of that project is when possible, to maintain high quality beaver created wetland habitat for a lot of fish and wildlife species, as well as the benefits of people.

When we first saw the site here, I believe it was 2016, our recommendation was to install a beaver baffle and a beaver baffle as a device that can be installed through beaver dams to help control the water level in that pond.

The idea here was to mitigate the water level a little bit to reduce some of the flooding on the footpaths.

It worked all right.

It is a challenging location in Allen Brook 'cause there's quite a bit of water that flows through here.

Captures a lot of the runoff from the developments here.

So during heavy rain events, there's a lot of water that filters through here.

So it can be really difficult for our beaver baffles, which was a 12-inch pipe to be able to handle that volume of water.

And then eventually, the beavers abandoned the site and moved somewhere else.

(gentle music) - So in terms of how much land the beavers occupy in the Allen Brook, I think they probably, in terms of their beaver ponds, occupy about half an acre.

That sort of exceeds the minimum lot size in our zoning district, but they obviously forage further than that to sort of get their, the wood that they need.

(ambient music) - My name is Reed Carr, I serve on Williston's Conservation Commission, which is appointed by and also advises the select board.

Before the beavers began building their dams in this part of the brook, the brook was a lot straighter than it naturally would be and some of that is encroachment from development on the sides and that straightening makes the water go faster and that causes more erosion and it picks up more sediment in the brook's water.

I also think that the beavers are showing us that we are living too close to the brook.

And before they came to this stretch of the Allen Brook near the wreck path, the Allen Brook waterway was already an impaired waterway.

Since 1992, it's been identified as a brook or waterway that needs to be monitored carefully and have restoration done.

- [Tyler] In 2023, when I looked at the site again where the beavers were relatively in the same area as they were in 2016, creating similar issues, I decided that we probably shouldn't try a beaver baffle at that time just 'cause the site had changed a little bit through those years.

The main beaver dam was still relatively intact and in the same area, but with rain events through over the years, it silted in different places so that the flow of water changed slightly and it was still relatively shallow.

There's quite a bit of water volume that flows through there and I didn't think a beaver baffle was gonna function as intended and be able to resolve the conflict that the beavers were creating there.

- They do create some issues for us.

You know, we have to work hard to make sure that the trails are open.

Ultimately, the beavers are prolific workers.

They have an unmatched work ethic.

So that sort of fed into our conversation with the Conservation Commission here to sort of work with them.

So what we actually ended up doing in that particular area of the Allen Brook Nature Trail up by Wildflower Circle, we took the decision to raise all the punch in so the trail structure is up by about six inches to try and get them out of the water.

We did think the hands-off approach was appropriate in this instance.

Further down near the central school as a result of sort of the change of the Allen Brook and it's sort of opening up a new channel, it has undermined some of the posts to support a boardwalk that we have down there which have fallen away, which means we put in some temporary structures but we are gonna have to look at a more permanent solution to that which is gonna involve bridging the new channel that's been formed.

(ambient music) - I admit it, I have beaver fever.

It all started in earnest when my wife, Grace, bought me the book "Eager" by Ben Goldfarb.

It inspired me to make this documentary.

Beavers are not just on ponds and rivers.

They are everywhere.

- An interesting story, I went to a wedding two summers ago in Burlington at St Joseph's Cathedral.

It is a beautiful cathedral and when you go in, these beautiful painted medallions on the ceiling and one is of a beaver and the original oak pews have swirls of beaver tails in them and it's because the beaver was so important to the French Canadians that worked in the area and it's the national animal of Canada.

It's interesting that in the 1600s, because it was Catholics mainly that settled in New France, the bishop of Quebec asked the powers that be, can we eat beavers?

They were trapping beavers and then they couldn't eat the meat because of Lent or on Fridays.

They decided that beavers were a fish.

It was scaly tail, they stand under water for a while.

They declared beavers are a fish and to this day, you can eat beavers for Lent.

- I did have beaver meat many years ago and it was at a game supper.

Bradford Vermont was famous for having these game suppers so people could try different types of meats.

And I don't think beaver is particularly tasty.

(chuckles) It's like it wouldn't be your first choice.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] When I go out filming on the Allen Brook Nature Trail, I have my camera and tripod swung over my shoulder.

If I happen to pass someone on the trail, they usually ask, "What are you filming?"

When I tell them the beavers of Allen Brook, their responses have been "The beavers are really going to work."

"They sure changed the landscape."

"Oh, the beavers have been really destructive."

And then they'll point at all the chewed and falling timber, "Look at all these trees."

Only once did someone say to me the beavers are magnificent (ambient music) - Looking at this area, they have a number of dams and that's pretty typical.

Beavers will build multiple dams within their area.

So beaver dams are made of mud and sticks that the beavers construct in the water.

The reason beavers build dams is to capture that water and pound it.

Beavers feel a lot safer in the water than they do on land.

So they like to flood areas so they can swim to their food source, their food source being primarily trees.

So your aspen, your birch, your maples, willows, alders, things like that.

A lot of the tree species that grow within that riparian area, (birds chirping) - The beavers rely on water for their livelihoods.

So they're managing the flow of the brook around the clock 24 hours a day.

Also, the damming materials have been known to help filter out contaminants as well.

We expect overall that the water should become cleaner and the flows should become more regular.

- [Terry] To see the work that they do to come out and see that the trees that they're working on chewing and see how they are engineering these dams, it's amazing that they are able to intertwine these twigs and branches and things and pack them with mud and you know, create this incredible environment.

And there's also the idea that the dams will slow water down when we do have these intense rain events during, because of climate change and they will slow the water and they call it slow it, spread it and sink it so there's less damage to the environment and people's homes.

- I have a five-year-old son and one of our favorite activities is to come out and observe the dam and see if we can see the beavers.

And you start to notice all the little changes.

You can see the paths where they've been coming up out of the water.

You can see the bite marks where they've been feeding on the bark of some of the plants.

It's really surprising how much you can notice if you pause and take some time.

(ambient music) - [Narrator] April 7th, it is international beaver day.

The beavers did not disappoint.

I saw four beavers this evening.

I was on the west side of Allen Brook.

I had to walk behind my neighbor Mike's house to get there.

West Side has a great view of the beaver pond.

The beaver swam back and forth, painted in amber sunlight.

It was the golden hour.

Even a duck joined the festivities.

(lighthearted music) - When beavers build dams in an area, they really start the basis of the food web.

So they increase the productivity of this water so they warm the temperature a little bit, which allows phytoplankton, zooplankton, your macro invertebrates, which are like your aquatic insects to really thrive in this environment.

This habitat's really important for a lot of species.

We have frogs that are tripping in the background.

They're beginning to mate and reproduce and these are the wetlands that they are gonna use.

- I am definitely a beaver believer.

I think that they are a really positive occurrence here in Williston.

When beavers come to an area, immediately we notice other species starting to follow.

Amphibians love the marshlands, the wetlands that are created.

A fish do well and the birds follow because they come to eat the insects, they come to eat the amphibians and the fish.

So we're gonna see a more diverse and rich ecosystem most likely in this area as a result.

- I am a beaver believer and I think that the beavers are an important part of the ecosystem.

When I'm birding in an area where there are beaver dams, it does increase the amount of species of birds that I'm seeing just because of the increased of habitat with the water that's present, the shrubs, and the growth that's happening in these beaver lands.

And it does it.

It can increase the bird species tenfold.

- Beavers are a keystone species.

They are important because they make these ecosystems that a lot of other animals take advantage of and are able to live in.

And if there were no beavers, they wouldn't be able to do that.

- So if you think of a stone arch, the keystone is the piece that's in the middle.

And if you take that piece away, the arch will fall.

So in this case, if you take a beaver out of the ecosystem, the ecosystem will kind of fail, the biodiversity will decrease, and other species will disappear.

- Beavers do a lot of good for our environment, particularly our wetland environment.

By creating these dams.

They help sort of dechannelize the Allen Brook and allow sediment to form and create these wetlands.

So there's something that we really are keen to encourage.

You know, a large part of setting up the nature trail at the heart of the village of Williston was to encourage nature.

And you know, boy are we getting it now.

(lighthearted music) - [Narrator] The beavers built their first lodge by Wildflower Circle and Keystone Drive.

Maybe the beavers are showing us something after all.

Am I becoming a beaver believer?

(lighthearted music) - My name is Andrew Plum, and I'm the town conservation planner.

So the current status is we have a couple of beaver lodges.

One is on the main channel of the Allen Brook and that one appears to be active still.

And then there's one over near Wildflower Circle that doesn't appear to be active anymore.

And the area surrounding that looks much more like a creek running through a meadow, which is common for inactive areas that were previously occupied by beavers.

Town's approach to the beavers has not changed.

My predecessor, Simon Myles, was the original kind of one who discussed that most recently, I should say, with the Conservation Commission.

And we're still looking to just observe what's going on there.

- It's important to note that the Williston Conservation Commission doesn't have like a singular view on beavers.

Everybody on the commission has their own experiences and expertise, but in general we find that the least amount of management and activity around the beavers that the public and also public works can tolerate is the best way to go.

(lighthearted music) - The one thing I'd like people to to know about the beavers is they're here to stay.

Beavers are gonna come and go from the site.

They have been for many years.

It can be challenging when they're in these sites 'cause they do create issues with trails, but the benefits of having beaver in specifically Alan Brook is they're capturing a lot of sediment and a lot of runoff from the developments here.

- In terms of who the new neighbors are, if you think about it on the timescale of somebody living in Williston today, it seems like the beavers are the new neighbors.

But if you think on a longer timescale, the beavers were here long before European settlers created the village of Williston.

- I think a good philosophy to have with wildlife in general is to understand them and understand the benefits that they provide because you may see beavers cutting down trees and think, "Oh no, there goes a tree that's sequestering carbon and we are having a problem with climate change," when actually, what the beavers are doing is creating more diversity and a habitat with all these trees that are growing and sequestering all this carbon.

And it's really important to not just look at one aspect of what is happening, but to understand the whole picture.

- So we are their new neighbors, we should learn how to live with them.

- [Narrator] Over the past year, I've come to realize the beavers work for the health and the benefit of their home, the earth.

They're not here to tend to the needs and whims of their two-legged new neighbors.

Do you think I'll be getting a casserole?

(lighthearted music) (lighthearted music continues) (lighthearted music fades)