Avoyelles Police Jury intensifies battle with beavers

In the ancient battle of man vs. beast, perhaps none is as aggravating and apparently unwinnable as the battle with beavers.

Once prized for their fur and hunted almost to extinction in this area, the buck-toothed builders have come back from the brink with a vengeance.

The Avoyelles Parish Police Jury has put bounties on the large rodents and hired free-lance trappers, but those efforts were ineffective.

The parish has hired a professional dam-busting company, Grand Ecore Blasters, that uses explosives to break up large dams. Unfortunately, while dynamite does a number on the dam, it has little impact on the beavers.

Within a short time, a new dam has been built to replace the broken one.

To complement the dam-busting operation, the Police Jury has hired Cenla Nuisance Wildlife Control -- an expert at handling everything from bats to boars, including beavers. The company will be paid $45 per beaver tail its trappers turn in.

“The Police Jury has been actively trying to handle the flooding caused by beaver dams in the parish,” Civil Works Director Kevin Bordelon said.

Although parish crews have found and destroyed a number of dams this year, “the beavers build their dams almost as fast as we can break them.”

Assigning parish employees to dam-busting duty “pulls money away from other road and drainage projects,” Bordelon said.

“Beavers are a big problem,” trapper Harry Vermaelen said. “They aid with the flooding problems that may already be present. Their damage is not in the trees they cut down but the trees that are killed by the flooding they cause.”

The large rodent also burrows into levees near waterways, which can cause water to pass through the levees.

“The beaver likes that,” he said. “The more water the better for him.”

Vermaelen, who owns Cenla Nuisance Wildlife Control, has been trapping his entire life. He was given the okay to start work in Avoyelles on May 3.

“Kevin (Bordelon) gave me a map of Avoyelles with little red X’s marking problem areas,” Vermaelen said. “It looked like a chicken stepped in red ink and walked across the map.”

FUR MARKET DECLINE

As the fur market has declined, the nuisance complaints have increased, he said.

“The problem from raccoons and beavers is out of hand,” he said. “There is no money in fur any more.”

He said he used to hunt raccoons as a kid and would get $18-20 for a pelt. This past year the price was $1.50.

“I used to get $100 for an otter skin,” he said. “Now they go for $20, which is still better than any other fur out there.”

Vermaelen lives in Pineville but has clients in Rapides, Concordia, Grant, LaSalle and “anywhere there’s a problem. I just finished a project for a doctor in Lake Charles.”

Vermaelen has a state license to hunt nuisance animals year-round.

“We get skunks under the patio, raccoons in the attic, bats in the attic, coyotes killing pets in the back yard, wild hogs and a lot of beaver calls,” Vermaelen said.

Eliminating a problem is not as simple as going out, busting up the dam and shooting a few beavers, he said.

“You have to outsmart the beaver on his own turf,” Vermaelen said. “We go in and evaluate the entire site. You have to eliminate every beaver in the colony. If you leave two of them, in six months you will have a full colony again.”

HIDDEN PROBLEM

Vermaelen said beaver problems are often hidden from view.

“A landowner may not know he has beavers until he passes by one day and sees a beaver dam with 50 acres of water behind it,” he noted. “If you don’t get the water off trees soon enough, it will kill them.”

Vermaelen said he and his assistants use traps and firearms to take out the pests. Poison is not used because “it can have some unpleasant consequences. It can get into a water system and cause more problems than the beavers.”

He said he and his team will set up at night, using silencers and night vision goggles to kill the animals when they are working at night.

“I know a lot of people who can shoot a rifle and can shoot it well,” Vermaelen said, “but you have to be able to find the animal. The biggest problem is finding them. If you can’t find what you are shooting at, you won’t be very successful.”

Bordelon said the Police Jury needs help from the general public and landowners if the beaver control program is to be successful.

If a problem is identified, Bordelon said to call him at the Parish Barn in Mansura at 964-2142. Trappers will “make every attempt to talk to landowners prior to entering properties,” he said.

The parish is asking landowners to assist the trappers in doing their jobs by granting permission to enter the property to deal with the animals.

“With the help of everyone, this process should move forward smoothly,” Bordelon said.