by Ella Weigel And Carolyn Shapiro, Community News Service

Gregg Lyman enjoys watching the ducks and blue heron flock to the water where beavers build their dams in the LaPlatte River behind his house in Hinesburg. But when the water starts rising and creeping onto his land, he has to knock the dams down, he said.

Lyman, who lives on Gilman Road adjacent to the LaPlatte Headwaters Town Forest, said he has done this for years when the beaver dams threaten to flood his property. He doesn’t destroy the habitat, he said, but pushes over the beavers’ wood construction to let water flow over it.

“All I do out back is knock it down and prevent the water from flooding everybody’s property,” Lyman said.

Earlier this year, the Hinesburg Town Forest Committee learned that Lyman had gone into the town forest with heavy machinery and destroyed three beaver dams. The committee considered the incident a “violation of the conservation easement” on the land and voted to refer it to the Hinesburg Selectboard to take “further action,” according to the minutes from a committee meeting on Jan. 26.

Committee members didn’t know why Lyman damaged the beavers’ work, said Pat Mainer, who chairs the forest committee. The dams were “upstream from the landowner in question, so it wasn’t in any way threatening his property,” she said.

Although the details of the Hinesburg matter remain murky, it illustrates a common conflict in Vermont between beavers that live in protected areas and the humans nearby. Beaver dams create and expand wetland habitat, which supports an array of wildlife species. They also filter and slow down moving water, helping reduce nutrient loads in Lake Champlain, according to state environmental experts. Those beaver dwellings, though, can aggravate nearby property owners when wetland water levels rise and cause flooding in surrounding areas. 

“(Beaver) habitat is really important here in Vermont,” said Tyler Brown, a wildlife specialist with the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department and the state’s point person for handling beaver-human conflicts. “It’s really beneficial for a lot of fish and wildlife species. That wetland habitat is also important for people as well, for improving water quality and just being able to absorb a tremendous amount of water.”

In an interview this month, Lyman said his land was at risk from the beaver dams he razed in January.

“We become more and more under water,” he said, noting that his septic system is behind his home, where he has lived with his wife since 1993. “It’s not just a matter of a little trickle or a stream.”

Lyman is a contractor who owns Lyman Excavating in Hinesburg. He said he doesn’t usually use his equipment to knock down the beaver dams but happened to have a smaller excavator at his home at that time.

Todd Odit, Hinesburg’s town manager, told the town forest committee that he would speak with Lyman to try to resolve the issue. In a recent interview, Odit said he told Mainer, “Before elevating this encroachment to a selectboard meeting, I would try to reach out with the person suspected of making that encroachment and try to have a conversation.”

Odit told Lyman he could no longer dismantle the dams himself but had to alert the town when he had concerns about flooding, Lyman said. He agreed he would do that in the future, he said.

During the town forest committee’s March 9 meeting, Mainer said she and some other committee members were skeptical that the light-handed approach would prevent Lyman from continuing his dam-destroying practice.

“I taught middle school for 37 years, and I wasn’t into punishment, but any infraction … had a consequence,” Mainer said.

In 2007, Hinesburg acquired the 301 acres of the LaPlatte Headwaters, an area along the LaPlatte River between Gilman Road and Silver Street, to make available for public use. The Vermont Land Trust and the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, which granted the land to the town, jointly hold the conservation easement on the property.

“Part of the reason for conserving (the forest) was that a lot of the agricultural land at the north end (of town) was originally wetlands,” Andrea Morgante, a local conservationist and founding member of the Hinesburg Land Trust, said.

Those wetlands were disturbed by the building of ditches and dredging for agriculture use in the 1930s and 1940s, she said. “Really the most efficient and economical and ecologically suitable way to restore a wetland is if you can let the beavers do the work for you.”

The easement was created to protect the diverse wildlife habitat, soil and water quality and natural landscape — which includes forests, fields, wetlands and areas along the river and streams. The easement prohibits “change of the topography of the land in any manner” and the town’s management plan specifies that only non-motorized and non-commercial recreational activities are permitted in LaPlatte Headwaters.

The LaPlatte Headwaters Town Forest Management Plan, which governs maintenance of and access to the property, cites the need to protect unique species of plants and animals there, including the endangered Indiana bat, described as the size of a human thumb.

The plan offers guidance on beavers: “Allow beavers and other native wetland species to recolonize and influence the areas along and around the LaPlatte. If beaver activity comes in conflict with other purposes of the conservation easement, town roads or culverts, or neighbors, consult with Vermont Fish and Wildlife biologists and the Chittenden County forester.”

For violations of the easement or management rules, the decision to pursue any action lies with the town, as owner of the land, said Abby White, spokesperson for the Vermont Land Trust.

The state would oversee issues involving beavers and dams, she added. “There’s multiple jurisdictions at play. It’s on town land, and there’s a conservation easement that we hold that allows for management of land. The state has regulations related to human-wildlife interactions.”

The fish and wildlife department offers a beaver baffle program to help landowners, road crews and municipalities that have problems with beaver activity. Baffles are tubes installed in dams to allow water to flow through, controlling river levels while maintaining the beaver construction.

Brown said he gets about 400 calls and emails a year from residents mostly concerned about flooding from nearby dams. Of those, he visits about 50 sites in person and installs baffles or exclusion fences in about 15 locations.

State wildlife department representatives visited Lyman’s home in the past to talk about his handling of beaver dams and never challenged his methods, he said.

“It’s the same spot I’ve been working with for the 30 years I’ve been here,” Lyman said.