A habitat built by a group of beavers on the Gettysburg battlefield is at risk, according to members of a conservation group.
In a post on Facebook, the South Mountain Audubon Society shared that a group of North American beavers have set up a lodge and dam very close to Devil’s Den on the Gettysburg battlefield.
And that habitat might be demolished, according to the post.
Evan Vaeth, vice president of the South Mountain Audubon Society, told Fox 43 that a park biologist mentioned that the pond may have to be “drawn down” to maintain the nearby parks and monuments.
“He went into good detail about what they do to make sure it doesn’t flood the monuments and all the things that beavers do for the area,” Vaeth told Fox 43. “But at the end of it, he mentioned that, in a very short sentence, that orders came up from the Department of the Interior, which oversees the National Park Service, that the Beaver Pond had to get drawn down.”
The dam was built along the Plum Run stream near Crawford Avenue, and has led to a growing wetland ecosystem over the course of several years.
A statement on South Mountain Audubon Society’s Facebook page said that “park service biologists have done an incredible job of mitigating the effects of these new residents so that monuments and roads will not be affected by their colony.”
Moreover, they added, the dam has attracted many species to the area, and that “ecosystems with beavers are far healthier, for humans and non-humans alike, than those without them.
“But ‘someone’ has decided that the beavers need to go and the park has been instructed to return the area along Crawford Avenue to the way it looked in 1863!” the post continues. “Have we learned nothing since the eradication of the beavers in Colonial days? Do we still have to engage in a ‘war’ on these grounds instead of learning to co-exist with nature?”
