Busy beavers gnawing away at New Jersey man’s patience, one tree at a time

“Arrogant” and “selfish” beavers are gnawing away at Chris Ritter’s peace of mind.

While North America’s largest rodent is generally considered to be one of earth’s master architects, building whole aquatic ecosystems from felled trees, the beaver is the destroyer of Ritter’s world, particularly the swampy backyard beyond his pool and hot tub in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens.

“That’s not a pond, that’s my lawn,” Ritter said on a recent February afternoon.

Ritter owns 30 acres of land in New Egypt, Ocean County, and a small creek, Jumping Brook, meanders through his property. His land is adjacent to a preserve that’s dotted with old, defunct cranberry bogs. Those man-made bogs are ideal for beavers to dam and flood, making safe, swimmable ponds that coyotes, their only natural predator in New Jersey, can’t get to.

“Beavers are just doing what beavers do, realistically. It’s hardwired into them to create this perfect atmosphere for themselves,” said Adam Burnett, executive director of the Beaver Institute, a nonprofit that aims to resolve “beaver-human conflicts in a science-based manner.”

When beaver kits get old enough, they set off on their own, leaving their lodges to go find their own land to flood, somewhere downstream. That’s led them to Ritter’s property over the years, damming up the brook that curls through his yard.

“I was usually able to fend them off. They’ll build a dam out here, this will flood up, and then I’ll bust it open a couple times and then they cut more trees and build it again,” he said, overlooking a small beaver dam behind his home. “It’s just nuts, man.”

Biologists, state and federal agencies, and nonprofits acknowledge that the beavers can become a nuisance and require management. Helping landowners with downed trees and flooding is a large part of the Beaver Institute’s work, Burnett said.

“We aim for coexistence and this is the main complaint,” Burnett said. ”With New Jersey being so densely populated, too, that’s the challenge.”

The Beaver Institute recommends “pond-leveling pipes” to keep water flowing between flooded areas and fences to protect trees over the alternative: trapping. The institute will even financially assist landowners with their problems as long as they commit to allowing beavers to remain on their property.

On a walk around the old bogs near Ritter’s home, most waterfront trees were gone and had their bark chewed off, their stumps sticking up like sharpened pencils. Some trees were only half-chewed and dead.

In the distance, a massive beaver lodge rose from the water.

Beaver ponds can improve water quality, biologists say, along with providing ecosystems for frogs, fish, turtles, and waterfowl. In the Pinelands, they can act as buffers against wildfires that sweep through the forests in summer.

Ritter, 53, said there’s a downside to that, noting that flooded land and felled trees displace deer, mice, raccoons, and countless other animals and insects, including rare birds and snakes. He reiterated that in a recent Pinelands-related Facebook group post that generated hundreds of comments, in which he called beavers “selfish” animals that “can’t live with others.”

Some accused him of anthropomorphizing animals.

“Rodents do not get to control the forest!” Ritter wrote back.

Samuel Moore, a seventh-generation cranberry farmer in Tabernacle, Burlington County, also has a low opinion of beavers and tangles with them every year in his bogs. By flooding the land, Moore said beavers even destroy the trees they don’t cut down, like the dwindling Atlantic white cedar.

“An old cranberry grower once told me that ‘people either want beaver around or Atlantic white cedar, but they can’t have both, there’s no in between,’ ” Moore said.

Moore allows licensed fur trappers to take beavers off his land every year. He said beavers are “dumb.”

Trapping, in New Jersey, is regulated by the state’s Department of Environmental Protection via its Division of Fish and Wildlife. There are beaver and otter trapping seasons, broken down by geographic zones, with limits on the number of animals a licensed trapper can take in a short time span.

Trapping enthusiasts believe there are not enough permits issued and noted that in 2020, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have “removed statutory limitations” on the number of beaver that could be taken in the state.

“There’s beaver everywhere,” said Robert Staudt, a former field and education director for the New Jersey Trappers Association.

Ritter’s a fisherman and hunter, but he’s not interested in trapping beavers himself or even paying a pest control service to do it. It’s illegal to shoot them, he noted.

Potential fur trappers must take an education course in which they have to demonstrate the ability to skin an animal. Trapping enthusiasts say that’s done to weed out anti-hunting and trapping activists who, in the past, would try to get beaver permits, which are limited, and never use them.

Trappers say beavers aren’t that hard to catch — they swim through a submerged trap that, ideally, kills them instantly when it slams shut — but the work is cold and wet.

“It’s probably the most physically demanding of all fur trapping,” Staudt said.

Ritter, a security technology consultant, was able to obtain a special out-of-season depredation permit for beavers that cause damage. That will permit him to allow trappers on his property to take out the beavers. That process involves an inspection by the United States Department of Agriculture, which looks for evidence of flooding to roads, homes, septic system, wells, agricultural fields, or a majority of lawn/landscaped area.

“My grass and my property’s gone and my trees are getting destroyed. Not to mention the mosquito problem,” he said, motioning to his swampy yard. “I don’t want to kill a ton of beavers, but something needs to be done because next year it’s going to be worse and the year after it’s going to be worse.”

Trapping and relocating beavers, while difficult, is often the ideal solution for those seeking coexistence but in New Jersey, it’s illegal to relocate most wildlife. Trappers, historically, often sold beaver pelts and their meat. One trapper said they taste like beef and make a great stew.

Ritter, who has a stuffed beaver in his “man cave,” said he doesn’t want to skin one or eat it.

“I just want to get them out of here,” he said.