HAVERHILL — Conservation experts for the city and a developer say it is unlikely construction along a rural stretch of North Avenue forced beavers out of the woods and into the road where they were hit by cars.
After a resident complained last week about the dead beavers to Mayor James Fiorentini, he ordered the city's conservation officials to look into the matter. A local environmental consultant working for the Merrimack Valley Hospice House being built along North Avenue also reviewed the complaint.
Curtis Young, president of Wetlands Preservation Inc., an environmental consulting firm based in Plaistow, N.H., said the beaver deaths were likely the result of Mother Nature — not because of construction of the Hospice House deep in the woods there.
Young said Merrimack Valley Hospice hired his firm to oversee the preservation of plant life and wildlife on 39 acres of woodlands and wetlands at 360 North Ave., where the Hospice House is being built.
He said the project is sensitive to plants and wildlife on the land, and that steps were taken to protect Snow's Brook, which is a stream that flows through the area, as well as wetland areas on the property. City Environmental Health Technician Robert Moore said beavers build their lodges in Snow's Brook.
"Wildlife road killings are saddening, but they are, unfortunately, not unusual," Moore said. "I would think it is possible a beaver cross North Avenue to go between Frye Pond on the east side and their Snow's Brook impoundment on the west side."
Young said the construction project does not affect the brook.
"The balance of our work is actually restoration, with plantings on the site to provide a buffer between the (hospice) house and the stream," Young said.
A portion of the site had been disturbed years ago by gravel excavation, he said.
"We're turning that into a new wetland area to compensate for wetland filling in a small area," he said.
Springtime flooding can cause beaver movement, with some making unsuccessful attempts to cross North Avenue — a heavily traveled road.
"Beavers build their lodges in the fall, and when you get a major rainstorm in the spring, it's enough to accelerate their movement," Young said. "They get flooded out of their lodges."
Also in spring, Young said, beavers migrate throughout the drainage basin areas they call home.
"The young beavers are being kicked out of their lodges and are being redistributed," Young said. "As a result of this movement, and the fact that they are slow moving, dark colored and nocturnal, it can lead to their being hit by cars in areas where they are moving upstream and downstream between ponds and the drainage basin."
A state wildlife official agreed with the local experts.
"Springtime is when young beavers disperse from the family groups and travel into unfamiliar areas," said Laura Hajduk, a wildlife biologist with MassWildlife. "Sometimes it involves crossing busy roads. It happens throughout the state.
"Unless they are completely removing a pond, it's an unlikely scenario that construction is causing this," Hajduk said of the Hospice House construction.
Last week, Bradford resident Bert LaCerte Jr. sent a letter to the mayor expressing his concerns over two dead beavers he saw on different days along North Avenue, in the vicinity of where the Hospice House is being built.
"The loss of wildlife bothers me," LaCerte said.
The implication that the construction project had something to do with the deaths of the beavers prompted Young to investigate and respond.
Merrimack Valley Hospice is building the new Hospice House deep in the woods at 360 North Ave. A 750-foot driveway, opposite the Frye's Pond area of North Avenue, will lead patients along a wooded private road to the house, which will be on a small section of 39 acres. The house will have 14 private bedrooms with a pastoral view, and patients will have direct access to private patios where they and their family members can enjoy the outdoors.
Joan Stygles Hull, president and CEO of Merrimack Valley Hospice, said her organization is sensitive to the plant life and wildlife on the property.
"We're trying to be very careful about protecting the wildlife," she said.
Young said the beaver population in Massachusetts has increased as a result of changes in trapping regulations.
"They have no natural predators, so they can overwhelm their habitat quickly," Young said. "I think every stream that feeds into the Merrimack has a beaver population, and a beaver problem."
Young said beavers are most active this time of year.
"Either because they've eaten themselves out of house and home, or they have been displaced by parents," he said. "High population and high water conditions affect their mortality."
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Beaver facts
Favor habitat containing shrubs, softwood trees, flat terrain, and streams that can be dammed to create ponds.
North America's largest native rodents, weighing between 35 and 80 pounds as adults.
Spend about 80 percent of their time in water.
Adult beavers have few predators and may live up to 20 years or more.
Young beavers stay with their parents through two winters.
Feed on various aquatic plants, especially water lilies, shoots, twigs, leaves, roots and bark of woody plants.
Source: MassWildlife
