Beavers Causing Flooding In Van Buren County

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The Van Buren County Drain Commission has had a beaver problem lately. Drain Commissioner Joe Parman tells WSJM News there’s been an increasing number of instances in which beavers have caused flooding of fields and roads by blocking county drainage.

“Within our county drains, they build dams across them,” Parman said. “Sometimes, we have one dam, and other times we’ll have a series of two or three dams in a row where they just keep damming the water to back it up so they can reach their food source,” Parman.

Parman tells us his team has seen beaver dams as big as 200 feet long and four feet tall. The crews remove a dam only to find it rebuilt the next morning. So, the beavers have to be removed, which means putting them down. That’s because he says state law prohibits relocating beavers. He thinks the reason for the rising cases is that the price for beaver fur has plummeted, so no one hunts them.