Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republican lawmakers continue to dig in their heels during a yearslong tug-of-war over how regulators should hold property owners liable for contamination caused by “forever chemicals” known as PFAS.

They are pushing competing proposals to protect so-called innocent landowners — those who didn’t knowingly cause their PFAS pollution — from liability under Wisconsin’s decades-old environmental cleanup law.

Evers’ two-year budget proposal, introduced last week, exempts some owners of residential and agricultural land. The proposal would also fund testing and cleanups of affected properties.

His budget takes a narrower tack than the approach spearheaded by a Republican who has long sought to protect innocent landowners.

During the previous legislative session, Sen. Eric Wimberger of Oconto co-authored an innocent landowner bill that lawmakers passed along party lines before an Evers veto.

The governor accused Republicans of using farmers as “scapegoats” to constrain state authority. His staff warned that if Republicans present the same proposal this session, Evers might veto it again.

Wimberger says Evers’ staff has failed to respond to his requests for an outline of innocent landowner exemptions Evers would support. Wimberger is now circulating two draft bills co-authored with state Rep. Jeff Mursau, R-Crivitz, that contain provisions virtually identical to the vetoed legislation. Those include grants for municipalities and owners of PFAS-contaminated properties.

The proposals also would limit the Department of Natural Resources’ power to require property owners to pay for cleanups and extend liability exemptions to certain businesses and municipalities.

“The governor needlessly vetoed the plan over protections for innocent landowners,” Wimberger said in a statement. “Now, after delaying this relief for a year, he says he wants to protect innocent landowners. While it’s encouraging to see him change his mind, he is no champion for pollution victims.”

How does the state handle PFAS-contaminated farmland?

Wisconsin’s spills law requires reporting and cleanup by parties that pollute air, soil or water or if they discover contamination from a past owner. That is because, in part, allowing pollution to remain on the landscape could be more dangerous to human health than the initial spill.

The DNR has held parties liable for PFAS contamination they didn’t cause but also has exercised discretion by seeking remediation from past spillers instead of current property owners. 

PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a family of more than 12,000 compounds commonly found in consumer products like food wrappers, nonstick pans and raincoats along with firefighting foam used to smother hot blazes. Some are toxic.

The chemicals pass through the waste stream and into sewage treatment plants, which commonly contract with farmers to accept processed sludge as fertilizer.

Testing is now unearthing PFAS on cropland from Maine to Texas. Several hot spots are located in Wisconsin too, among the more than 100 PFAS-contaminated case files the DNR currently monitors.

The agency maintains it has never, and has no plans to, enforce the spills law against a property owner who unknowingly received PFAS-contaminated fertilizer. But Republican lawmakers don’t trust those promises.

How do the budget and draft bill proposals compare?

Evers’ bill would exempt only residential and agricultural properties polluted with PFAS-contaminated sludge. Affected landowners would have to provide the DNR access to their property for cleanup and not worsen the contamination.

Evers’ innocent landowner exemption would sunset by 2036. 

Meanwhile, the Republican draft bills would prevent the DNR from enforcing the spills law when the responsible party qualifies as an innocent landowner and allow the department to clean up its property at its own expense.

The first bill focuses on innocent landowner provisions, while the second, larger proposal adds grant programs without specifying appropriations. Wimberger explained introducing two bills would “ensure the victims of PFAS pollution get the debate they deserve” and prevent Democrats from “playing politics” with PFAS funding and policy.

Unlike Evers’ budget proposal, the draft bills don’t release $125 million in aid to PFAS-affected communities that has sat in a trust fund for 18 months.

The Legislature allocated the funds in the previous two-year budget, but its GOP-controlled finance committee hasn’t transferred the cash to the DNR.

Lawmakers in both parties have bristled over the languishing money, with Democrats contending the committee could transfer it without passing a new law. The nonpartisan Wisconsin Legislative Council says lawmakers would be on “relatively firm legal footing” if they did so.

Republicans, meanwhile, say transferring the dollars without limiting DNR enforcement powers would not effectively help impacted landowners. They say the DNR could treat a landowner’s request for state assistance as an invitation for punishment.

The previous, vetoed bill garnered support from all three Wisconsin local government associations, but environmental groups, the DNR and Evers said it shifted PFAS cleanup costs to taxpayers.

Environmental groups also feared Republicans on the finance committee would continue withholding the $125 million even if the legislation had advanced — protracting the stalemate while weakening the DNR.

Nor would risking “unintended consequences” of weakening the spills law be worth $125 million, which would scratch the surface of remediation costs, environmental critics said.

Expenses in Marinette County alone, which is coping with PFAS contamination linked to a firefighter training site owned by Johnson Controls International, already exceed that amount.

The Milwaukee Business Journal reported the company upped its reserves by $255 million to finance the cleanup. With the increase, the company has recorded charges of about $400 million since 2019.

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Who pays for PFAS? Governor, GOP lawmakers wrestle over cleanup liability is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A year and a half after Wisconsin lawmakers earmarked $125 million to clean up toxic “forever chemicals” known as PFAS, the funds have yet to flow to contaminated communities.

That’s due to a legal and philosophical debate over the limits of government power and the potentially harsh consequences of a decades-old environmental law.

Lawmakers continue to hash out the rules to guide who would receive the money and, more importantly, the legal risks for entities that request it.

The Legislature’s GOP-controlled finance committee won’t transfer the cash designated to address Wisconsin’s PFAS problem to the state Department of Natural Resources, so it continues to accumulate interest in a trust fund.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers is now trying again — this time, embracing an idea penned by the Republican legislators with whom he sparred.

Evers’ plans, to be included in his upcoming budget proposal, include a cash infusion that expands the trust fund balance to $145 million, along with a provision contained in a GOP-authored PFAS bill that Evers vetoed last year.

That measure, introduced in 2023 by Sen. Eric Wimberger, R-Oconto, created grants for municipalities and owners of PFAS-contaminated properties — so-called “innocent landowners” — who didn’t cause their pollution.

It also truncated the DNR’s power to mandate cleanups.

But in his new budget proposal, Evers hopes to carve what appears to be a narrow liability exemption.

It would only apply to cropland that was polluted with PFAS when the owner unknowingly received contaminated fertilizer derived from sewage sludge. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources already has said it doesn’t enforce its cleanup policy under those circumstances.

What are PFAS?

PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a family of more than 12,000 compounds commonly found in consumer products like food wrappers, nonstick pans and raincoats along with special firefighting foam that can extinguish the hottest of blazes.

The intractable chemicals are turning up in drinking water around the country. In 2022, the EPA released health advisories, suggesting virtually no amount of several PFAS is safe for consumption.

The DNR is currently monitoring PFAS contamination at more than 100 sites.

What are state cleanup requirements?

State rules require reporting and environmental restoration by parties that pollute air, soil or water or discover past contamination on their property even if they aren’t directly responsible.

The DNR holds parties liable for PFAS contamination they didn’t cause but also exercises discretion to force past spillers to clean up instead of current property owners. The law also under certain circumstances exempts neighbors of contaminated properties from liability when a spill crosses property lines.

The department’s authority comes from Wisconsin’s spills law, passed in 1978. The Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed that legislators intended to see pollution cleaned up regardless of who caused it. Failing to do so, it said, is just as, if not more, dangerous to human health than the initial spill.

The power of Wisconsin’s spills law has come under scrutiny in recent years as the scale of PFAS cleanup costs comes to light.

What do the Senate bill’s backers dislike about current policy?

Last session’s Senate bill would have prevented the DNR from enforcing provisions of the spills law when the responsible party qualifies as an innocent landowner and allows the department to clean up its property at the agency’s expense.

Wimberger said the measure would prevent the financial ruin of landowners who seek help from the department to address PFAS pollution or obtain clean water, without which their “application for a grant is a self-incriminating statement they have a polluted property and are an emitter.”

The threat of enforcement against the owner of a contaminated property might cause banks to think twice about refinancing a loan or even require a borrower to pay up in full, he said. Looming enforcement could increase the difficulty of selling a property.

At its most pernicious, the law might drive property owners to avoid testing for pollutants, risking their health for fear of the financial consequences.

Is this actually happening to landowners?

Wimberger has often portrayed innocent landowners as homeowners or farmers who unknowingly had PFAS-containing inputs spread atop their fields.

But last year, Midwest Environmental Advocates, which opposed the bill, reviewed each of the 130 PFAS spill cases the department reported online.

The firm determined only seven cases applied to individuals and none concerned farmers whose contamination originated from PFAS-contaminated fertilizer. Most concerned businesses like chemical and energy companies, defense contractors and salvage yards.

What impacts would the Republican proposal have?

Wimberger said department promises to exempt farmers don’t suffice, and throwing money at the problem is ineffective unless lawmakers enact enforcement guardrails.

Although the GOP bill would have protected individuals, liability exemptions also could extend to businesses like private landfills or paper mills that spread pulp and industrial sludge onto farm fields.

A list of more than 20 potential innocents compiled by one of the bill’s co-authors includes an electric transmission company whose transformer exploded in 2019 and the city of La Crosse, which the state currently holds responsible for PFAS contamination caused by the city’s fire department at its municipal airport. The bill’s backers say the property owners lacked a choice when firefighters sprayed the PFAS-containing foam.

Attorneys from the nonpartisan Legislative Council told lawmakers PFAS manufacturers and companies that test those chemicals likely wouldn’t qualify as innocent landowners. 

However, the proposal would have prevented the DNR from enforcing cleanup laws against companies based on PFAS samples taken from company properties unless the department could show the contamination exceeded a government standard.

But Wisconsin lacks PFAS standards for groundwater, and GOP-backed bureaucratic hurdles, including a 30-month time limit on the rulemaking process, have encumbered efforts to create them.

The state’s second attempt will expire in March. 

Evers recently jump-started a new effort to create PFAS groundwater rules and proposed an exemption from the usual holdups.

“Safe drinking water should not be a partisan issue, and yet it has been,” said Marinette City Council member and clean water advocate Doug Oitzinger, whose county is coping with PFAS contamination linked to a firefighter training site owned by Johnson Controls International. “We have failed utterly as a state to have environmental laws that protect us when it comes to PFAS.”

What does Evers say he’ll include in his upcoming budget?

Evers’ proposal would transfer money to the DNR for PFAS testing and removal at public drinking water systems, testing of private wells, grants to stem the release of PFAS into the environment, research into PFAS destruction methods and statewide PFAS testing. Evers also would allocate $7 million to innocent landowners for testing and cleanup.

He continues to call for the release of the PFAS trust fund money, the balance of which now stands at $127.1 million, including unspent funds from a state firefighting foam cleanup program.

“We cannot afford more years of inaction and obstruction,” Evers said in a statement. “I urge Republicans and Democrats to work together to do what’s best for our kids and Wisconsin’s families by investing in critical efforts to improve water quality.”

But potential spills law impacts remain unknown until the governor’s budget clarifies the scope of liability protections Evers hopes to create.

“I’ve been waiting for months for the governor to clarify his definition of an ‘innocent landowner,’ and he has refused to respond to my requests,” Wimberger said in a statement.

Evers’ staff have said the governor remains opposed to limiting department authority, and if Republicans present a proposal identical to last session’s bill, he might veto it again.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

Wisconsin is still sitting on $125 million for PFAS cleanup is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Katie McCullough loved Arizona winters, but hot summers could be a drag. After purchasing a recreational vehicle, she spent time trekking cross-country to deliver shelter dogs to a no-kill rescue. 

McCullough, 56, visited friends and family, too, with her own canine pack — then, Rosy, Eddie Spaghetti, Ky, Pally, Duke, Nudge and Nutter Butter — a tossed salad of breeds.

During the pandemic summer of 2020, she once again loaded her RV and found respite in Dane County public parks. Why not make Wisconsin a half-year thing, she thought, with space for her and the pups?

McCullough, who works in cybersecurity, heard about 36 acres near the village of Rio. She purchased the property, sight unseen, and its spring-fed pond the following year.

“I don’t regret it at all,” McCullough said with a laugh.

She soon met the neighbors — about 10 furry lodge dwellers.

McCullough realized she had a beaver problem.

They live atop a small muddy island and constructed a dam roughly a decade ago. Fuzzy cattails grow across its 20-foot breadth. The dam left a once-lovely creek bone dry. 

Backed-up water enlarged the surrounding marsh and pond, where sandhill cranes, geese and ducks meander through a boggy stew of algae, lily pads and submerged logs.

Rooted in sodden ground, tall oaks — some more than 100 years old — withered and toppled. McCullough couldn’t access several acres of her property. 

Friends, family and locals recommended trapping the rodents and blowing the dam sky-high with Tannerite. 

The solution seemed dramatic and destructive.

“We’re all here for a purpose, right? To think that beavers are just born a nuisance,” McCullough said. “It’s tough because some populations do have to be controlled if there aren’t natural predators. But I’m not good at being a natural predator.”

Surely, other options besides trapping or bystanding existed.

Damming behavior

Beavers once numbered between 60 million and 400 million across the North American landscape, but development and unregulated hunting nearly decimated them. Twentieth-century conservation efforts helped beavers recover somewhat — to an estimated 1.5% to 20% of their historical population.

Conflicts with humans ensued as beavers returned to their former ranges: chewing trees, plugging culverts, flooding roads and farm fields.

Few studies quantify the costs of beaver damage, and the limited data are decades old. One pinned annual timber losses in Mississippi at $621 million, adjusted for inflation, while another determined that every dollar spent on beaver control saved that state $40 to $90.

Traditional responses involve trapping and dam breaching, but generally, these interventions require regular enforcement because new beavers move in.

Surveys show trapping support increases when people experience beaver-related damage, but an expanding body of research showcasing beavers’ ecosystem and economic benefits is drawing attention to the drawbacks of removal.

When beavers remain on the landscape, they create wetlands, which mitigate climate change impacts like drought, wildfires and flooding — problems increasingly seen in the Midwest. Other wildlife also depends on the habitat.

A growing chorus of advocates and ecological consultants are popularizing flow control devices, a solution to beaver flooding problems. They limit beavers’ damming behavior and reduce impacts on human infrastructure.

Hand-constructed with flexible plastic pipes and wire fencing, several types exist: pond levelers, culvert fences and decoy dams. Some bear trademarks like Beaver Deceiver and Castor Master.

They aim to reduce the desirability of potential dam sites, redirect beavers’ attention or “sneak” pond water away without attracting their notice. And they aren’t terribly common in Wisconsin. 

McCullough opted for coexistence.

State wildlife agencies generally regulate a trapping season to manage beaver populations and minimize property damage. Wisconsin’s forestry and fisheries divisions, dozens of municipalities, railroad companies and some tribal governments also contract with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to remove beavers and dams from designated lands and waters.

The state imposes few restrictions for handling nuisance beavers on private property.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources doesn’t remove them at landowner request or offer damage compensation, but people may hunt or trap beavers and remove their dams on their property without obtaining a license.

If a beaver dam causes damage to a neighboring property, the injured party may enter the property where the dam lies and remove it without being charged with trespassing.

There also are risks to ignoring one’s beavers. 

People who own or lease beaver-occupied land and don’t allow their neighbors to remove them are liable for damages.

Ditching dynamite

But Wisconsin wildlife managers recommend people consider alternatives before killing the animals, including flow devices like pond levelers.

They date to at least the 1920s when USDA Chief Field Naturalist Vernon Bailey proposed using an “entirely successful” drainage pipe constructed with logs and threaded through the dam.

“It is useless to tear out or dynamite beaver dams, as the beavers, if active, will replace them almost as fast as destroyed,” he remarked.

Subsequent testing indicated that early levelers sometimes failed, but the concept has evolved.

Modern devices control water height using a flexible plastic tube resting on a pond’s bottom. A cage surrounds the intake and prevents beavers from swimming close enough to detect flowing water, which researchers believe triggers their building itch. The other end of the tube passes through the dam, forming a permanent leak.

Installers say levelers, which cost $2,000 to $4,000, function for about 10 years, and annual maintenance takes less than an hour. They can modify setups to accommodate fish passage, narrow and shallow streams, large ponds and downstream beaver dams.

“No two beaver situations are the same,” said Massachusetts-based Beaver Solutions owner Mike Callahan, who has installed more than 2,000 flow devices and trains consultants. “The best solutions obviously are going to be ones that work for the beavers and that work for us.”

States throughout the Mississippi River basin, including Illinois, Kentucky, Minnesota and Missouri, recommend flow devices, but with varying awareness of best practices. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and University Extension even advertised Bailey’s design from 1922.

Pond levelers relatively uncommon in Wisconsin

Wisconsin residents have constructed beaver pond levelers, as have the Department of Natural Resources and USDA. But state natural resources staff say they rarely receive inquiries.

Despite their simple design, obtaining state authorization to install a flow device often takes longer than other activities like small-scale dredging and riprap installation because Wisconsin lacks a standard pond leveler permit.

Projects can vary across designs, siting and placement, with potentially significant impacts to where and how pond water flows, said Crystal vonHoldt, department waterways policy coordinator.

That makes it hard to develop a catch-all permit, but time-pressed agency staff certainly welcome any opportunity to streamline their review process, she said.

The law requires employees to evaluate impacts to water quality, navigation, wildlife, scenic beauty and public access to boating and fishing.

A department staff member told McCullough’s contractor and restoration ecologist Clay Frazer — who has overseen multiple beaver-related projects in Wisconsin like mock beaver dams — that many landowners opt not to install them after learning of the challenges.

Hiring a consultant to navigate the process can be cost-prohibitive. McCullough’s bill exceeded $10,000, but a grant offset it.

Proponents say the meaty requirements usher landowners toward a lethal resolution, which Wisconsin’s beaver trapping rules seemingly favor.

Community levels with beavers

Billerica, Massachusetts, had a flooding problem.

The town’s troubles followed a 1996 statewide voter referendum that banned foothold traps. Conflicts increased as the beavers expanded into the community, home to more than 42,000 residents along with wetlands, streams and two rivers. Prime habitat.

Things came to a head in 2000, and the town contracted with Callahan to address the problem non-lethally. At 43 locations where the town traditionally utilized trapping, he installed flow devices.

“They’re kind of instrumental in preventing certain culverts and major roads here in town from getting flooded,” said Isabel Tourkantonis, the town’s director of environmental affairs.

Trapping continued at another 12 sites because the devices either failed or the landscape made their use untenable.

Non-lethal management saved Billerica taxpayers $7,740 annually in avoided trapping and dam removal costs, according to a town analysis. The number of beavers killed dropped more than fivefold.

Maintaining 380 acres of beaver-created wetlands provided an estimated $2 million of free services each year, including water filtration, flood reduction and plant and wildlife habitat.

“It’s not just a matter of, ‘Let’s trap them and get rid of them,’” Tourkantonis said. “They also create important habitat that needs to be protected.”

Since the study concluded five years ago, the number of conflict sites has increased to 60, and Billerica annually budgets $15,000 for trapping and device maintenance.

Compared to fixing beaver-damaged roads and culverts, it’s a bargain, Tourkantonis said.

“If there’s a way to co-exist with an important animal population, that’s, I would think, the goal.”

Massachusetts landowners navigate a different permitting process.

To install a flow device, trap beavers out of season or remove a dam, they only need to obtain approval from a local health board or conservation commission — generally at little cost. It takes a few days.

Staff at the federal, Vermont and Massachusetts fish and wildlife agencies characterized the events that led to Massachusetts’ current system — beginning with the 1996 referendum — as a “calamity by design.”

The changes effectively ended state-regulated wildlife management, they reported, leading to increased confrontations with and negative views of beavers along with illegal trapping.

However, Tourkantonis said the new procedures cut “through the red tape and make it a little bit easier for folks to address an immediate public safety hazard.”

Flow devices have limits

Scientists have conducted virtually no peer-reviewed research evaluating the effectiveness of flow devices.

But studies supporting their use documented financial savings, high customer satisfaction and trapping reduction.

Callahan analyzed 482 sites where he added flow devices or trapped and found only 13% of pond levelers failed within two years compared to 72% of trapping sites to which beavers returned.

Yet flow devices aren’t silver bullets.

A study conducted by the USDA’s wildlife control agency in Mississippi indicated that half of levelers failed to meet landowners’ goals — although the participants didn’t always maintain them.

Callahan, like many coexistence proponents, attributes device ineffectiveness to the faulty installation of outdated models. They say this can confirm preexisting beliefs that flow devices are ineffective, or at best, temporary solutions.

“If they’re designed properly with the right sturdy materials and installed properly, these things work great,” he said. “If you have a crappy design, yeah, it’s not going to work.”

But Callahan estimates one in four beaver showdowns in Massachusetts require trapping.

Levelers aren’t effective in high-flow streams or developed floodplains, he said, where even a foot of water could swamp a home or neighborhood.

Drainage and irrigation ditches also aren’t ideal sites nor locations where water must be lowered to a depth in which beavers can’t live. Otherwise, they’re liable to build a new dam.

Jimmy Taylor, assistant director of the USDA’s National Wildlife Research Center, said flow devices have their uses but aren’t a beaver control substitute.

“If you’re looking at a large scale, simply putting in flow devices may not solve all of your problems, and it might not even be an applicable tool,” he said.

Damage control can alternatively involve removing dams, lodges and the plants beavers eat; installing fences or scary props and noisemakers; applying spicy or bitter repellants to food sources; and shooting.

“To try to just focus on one tool only, whether it’s lethal or non-lethal, is just not pragmatic,” Taylor said.

People tolerate beavers until conflict reaches a threshold.

One study found attitudes toward them soured in urban and rural areas, and people grew more accepting of lethal control as damage severity increased. Meanwhile, acceptance of flow devices decreased.

But another survey found that most landowners were open to beavers remaining on their property when they were offered incentives like technical assistance or compensation — a finding that could bolster support for investing in non-lethal techniques.

Previous efforts in Congress to appropriate several million dollars toward those efforts have proven unsuccessful.

Seeking to change ‘hearts and minds’

Frazer and McCullough hope to streamline Wisconsin permitting, making their case “one good flow device at a time.”

“It’s statutes. It’s permitting,” Frazer said. “But it’s also just hearts and minds. It’s people changing the culture of how they think about beaver.”

Their ponds look messy — dead trees and all — but to beaver backers, their value rivals rainforests or coral reefs.

“Let nature participate in what we need to accomplish,” McCullough said.

A smiling, buck-toothed beaver statue inconspicuously sits on the gravel driveway outside her home. Its concrete paws grasp a skinny tree stump, chewed to a sharp point.

McCullough’s sister, who lives in North Carolina, located the cartoonish creature on Facebook and gave it a fresh paint job — a family rib over McCullough’s beaver troubles.

Too heavy to mail, the 50-pound figurine hitched rides to weddings and socials, crawling its way north to Wisconsin like a baton handoff in a relay.

After a year, it finally arrived.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated to clarify how many beavers were on Katie McCullough’s property.

This story was produced in partnership with the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network, of which Wisconsin Watch is a member. It was also reported with support from the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems. Sign up for Wisconsin Watch’s newsletters to get our news straight to your inbox.

Opting for coexistence: Some Wisconsin landowners learn to live with beavers is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

*** A reporter’s view ***

Bennet Goldstein: Water cooler conversations rarely get as quirky as strategizing the best ways to obtain photographs of cute, occasionally destructive rodents. But for nearly a month it was all I could discuss.

From equipment purchases to road trip plotting, our team’s preparation to spot a beaver was either a lesson in steadfast resolve or overkill.

With a car weighed down by plenty of granola, trail mix and Goldfish crackers, Wisconsin Watch photojournalist Joe Timmerman, videographer Trisha Young and I spent a stretch of October driving through Wisconsin’s Driftless Area and Central Sands to report a series of solutions-focused news stories. We sought to learn how beavers and their dams could mitigate severe flooding and drought, which Wisconsin and other Midwestern states increasingly face due to climate change.

I could not write about beavers without capturing one on camera, a task that has even on occasion flummoxed The New York Times. 

Thankfully, a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network helped fund this undertaking.

We splashed through streams, bushwhacked through brush and hopscotched through reed grass to locate dry land where we might capture an image of our elusive furry target.

***

Last summer, I took a reporting trip to Viroqua for a different story with colleagues from the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk. There, former Vernon County Conservationist Ben Wojahn described a dilemma facing western Wisconsin communities as they consider removing failing flood control dams constructed by the federal government in the mid-1900s.

Maintaining the structures would cost more than their value, according to evaluations, but cutting gaps into them without backup protections left residents feeling insecure and unprepared for future floodwaters. 

In an ideal world, Wojahn suggested, the county could bring in  wood-chomping beavers to slow the flow by building nature’s dams.

What would that take?

Beaver relocation has happened before. Natural resources officials in Idaho and California famously parachuted the critters into hard-to-reach mountainous regions in the late 1940s and 1950s.

Such measures probably don’t make sense in Wisconsin, where beaver colonies polka-dot the state.

But how to find one?

Scientists warned me spotting beavers in the wild is exceptionally difficult, adding that they are typically active in the wee morning hours and at dusk.  Their astute smelling and hearing senses warn them of peepers.

Then again, these researchers had not attempted to disguise themselves as piles of grass.

I initially considered purchasing ghillie suits, but the thought of spending hours commando-crawling in an outfit meant to resemble foliage sounded unappealing. 

We ruled out the prospect of wading into lake shallows because Joe had rented a camera lens worth $10,000. Shrouding ourselves beneath synthetic netting would create too much noise when we stopped to pick our noses or stretch a hamstring.

I turned to wildlife photographers. 

Blogs offered many tips. One professional recommended hiding in shrubbery and shadows, but he urged the adventurous to be wary of ticks.

Then it dawned on me I might be overthinking this exercise. I could instead take inspiration from hunters who have plenty of tools for quietly stalking prey. I settled on a pop-up blind and silent swivel chair.

We needed only to locate a beaver lodge and lurk.

***

One October afternoon, Joe and I canoed across a pond near the village of Rio. We passed pond scum and lily pad patches before arriving at a rickety duck hunting stand, its wood warped and spotted with exposed nails. 

I steadied the canoe as Joe lunged for a foothold on the water-encircled platform. It wobbled under his weight. We eased the gear atop the stand as the sun hung low in the sky. 

“What’s going on?” I said, bobbing in the canoe as he unfurled the blind.

Joe laughed.

“Is this the first of many firsts of the lengths to which we’re going?” I asked, recording the moment on a GoPro. “You’re going into a special wildlife viewing tent with a hunting chair and hunkering down for the next hour in hopes of spotting a rodent.”

Joe had spotty cell reception, so we agreed I would return at dusk if I didn’t hear from him first.

Birds chirped as I paddled back to the car, periodically banging into submerged logs.

I hunched in the front seat, hoping to avoid agitating our host’s yappy dogs, who might scare the beavers. Perched in the host’s living room window, the canines stared me down.

“I’m in my car so they don’t hear me or smell me,” I texted Joe.

A mix of dread and boredom set in as I waited, praying this would be our only beaver-spotting attempt.

An hour passed. Sandhill cranes warbled in the distance.

Joe texted.

“It just barely stuck its head above water then dove back down but I got pictures of one!!!!”

*** A photojournalist’s view ***

Joe Timmerman: As my heartbeat quickened I shifted the camera’s gears, quietly racing to document our first beaver sighting without disturbing the natural moment.

I’ve photographed surveyors in the world’s longest cave on 16-hour expeditions, woken up hours before dawn to see Indiana’s returned bison under the rising sun and hovered inches away from bats suffering from white nose syndrome in Texas. But I had never undertaken an assignment like this. 

When Bennet asked how I felt about the lengths we had taken to photograph these cunning Castorids, all I could do was laugh. 

Spend pieces of a month traveling across south-central Wisconsin’s beautiful landscape to prove skeptical experts wrong — and serve our readers — by returning with photos of North America’s largest rodent?

I was all in.

After our first surprise sighting near Rio we tested our luck at an additional site. 
A shared hunch told us we could return home with an even better image. A few days later when we visited Jim Hoffman’s wide-spanning property at Goose Landing, I descended again into Bennet’s hunting tent before dusk.

An hour passed. The sun’s setting silhouetted the once-golden, green and yellow surroundings. Then another 30 minutes. My eyes darted between the beavers’ lodge across the pond and their trail to some felled trees nearby that Hoffman had showed us. 

A slight movement caught my attention. My eye recognized the  unmistakable slicked-back head of a beaver swimming across the pond. Then a second head popped up, and a third.

I zoomed in all the way, pushing our old company camera to the max in the darkening conditions. The mere seconds of opportunity etched the beaver images into the memory card before the animals disappeared beneath the water’s surface.

I waited another 30 minutes before calling it quits due to the lack of natural light. I stepped out of the tent and began packing up our gear, somewhat content but wanting more. 

That’s when I saw a beaver swimming directly toward me. I fumbled to pick the camera off the ground, manually spinning the sight into focus when the beaver’s tail slapped the water, sounding a thunderous echo that made me jump. 

After spending 11 hours that day making over 1,200 images, I couldn’t believe my sleepy eyes. I flipped through the first few pictures of the tail slap only to discover they were comically out of focus.

Moments later, a reprieve. The beaver re-emerged, seeming to look at me as  it swam nearby — offering a fresh opportunity to make a better picture.

“All three of them are swimming like 20 feet away from me right now slapping their tails,” I texted Bennet and Trisha as they hid in their car. 

“You could probably walk over and come see them.”

After all our silent stalking, the beavers had found us. Rather than rushing away, though, they were lingering — slapping the water to warn others of our presence. As the evening’s first stars appeared above, two swam parallelly in the pond below, putting on a show in trying to shoo us away.

“On our way!” Trisha replied.

*** A videojournalist’s view ***

Trisha Young: By the time Bennet and I rushed to the pond where Joe was photographing, about five or six beavers were making their rounds on the water. Our arrival seemed to increase their resolve to show us who was boss.

Thwack! The sound of the tail slap made me jump, stopping all of us in our tracks. A short while later, another thwack, then another. The beavers would beeline toward us, slap, then circle back and repeat the admonition.“What brave creatures,” I thought. Their boldness was intimidating, and the idea of being tail-slapped or bitten by their massive teeth was terrifying. Yet I was truly starting to like these hydraulic engineering rodents.

Bennet assured Joe and me that beavers would struggle to catch us on land. So I imagined falling to my fate into the dark, beaver-infested waters. 

I’ve interacted with beavers before, always while kayaking. I was accustomed to the tail slap, which I always interpreted as a signal that I should keep it moving. But this was something special: a whole colony of beavers. 

As I watched one pair of beavers swim side by side — one small, one large — I wondered whether Mama Beaver was showing her youngster how to lay down the law and make their authority known.

The sky turned far too dark for our cameras. We remained captivated by the furry varmints’ antics for about half an hour before finally obliging to their demand.

We headed back to the car, giddy with excitement despite the tiring day  reporting at Goose Landing. The encounter was invigorating, even if our cameras couldn’t fully capture the magic we witnessed in the darkness.

The interaction reminded me of something Hoffman emphasized as we traversed the land with him: Beavers have been here for thousands of years.

The Ojibwe tell stories of Amik, a giant beaver who was given an extraordinary tail and reshaped land across the Midwest. In these stories, the beaver holds a place of significance alongside the wolf, bear and muskrat.

The fur trade in Wisconsin centuries ago decimated millions of beavers and other fur-bearing animals, forever altering ecosystems and Native livelihoods. Tribes were forced to compete with traders for resources, disrupting traditional ways of life.

Now, another shift is underway in wetland conservation, reviving a story about the symbiotic relationship between beavers and humans. I was grateful to glimpse these creatures and document how humans are trying to mimic their engineering to restore Wisconsin wetlands.

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A bill that would empower Wisconsin municipalities to block the construction of solar and wind farms in their backyards has been introduced a second time.

Currently, local governments possess limited authority to regulate the siting and operations of solar and wind farms, but as the number and size of projects grow — solar panel fields spanning thousands of acres and wind turbines as tall as the Statue of Liberty — some residents from the Driftless Area and central Wisconsin say the state’s system for approving energy projects unfairly stacks the scales of power against communities that live alongside the facilities.

Meanwhile, a clean energy advocacy group and former Wisconsin utility regulator said the bill would enable a discontented minority to dictate energy policy for the entire state, effectively kill renewable energy development and generate uncertainty for businesses.

The Republican-backed proposal comes amid a wave of construction after federal lawmakers invested billions of dollars during the Biden administration to slow the pace of climate change. The ensuing backlash and enactment of local restrictions are playing out across the country.

Here’s what you need to know:

Some context: Investment in renewable energy has been a state priority for decades and a requirement for Wisconsin’s utilities. It also is central to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ ambitious climate goals. Wisconsin seeks to operate a carbon-free electric grid by 2050. 

In 2023, 9% of net electricity generated within the state came from renewable sources, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The governor’s Task Force on Climate Change expects most future emissions reductions to come from large-scale utility projects, especially the replacement of aging coal plants with solar farms.

In 2016, the state generated just 3,000 megawatt-hours of electricity from utility-scale solar facilities. Seven years later, it increased to 1.2 million. Nearly two dozen more solar farms are in the pipeline.

Wisconsin’s utility regulator, the Public Service Commission, oversees the approval of large projects, but opponents say gaps in state oversight make Wisconsin attractive to private developers, who aren’t mandated to share project expenses or evaluate ratepayer impacts.

They don’t have to demonstrate the energy created by the new installation is even needed at all — requirements if a public utility were to construct the facility. (The commission considers costs when utilities want to purchase power or an energy facility.) But developers can sell solar and wind farms to Wisconsin utilities. Ratepayers shoulder the infrastructure costs and pay state-authorized rates of return.

The commission reports that, compared to the Midwest and national averages, Wisconsin residents pay higher rates but less on their monthly bills because they consume less energy.

Opponents of large-scale projects also criticize the state’s disclosure requirements, which enable developers to acquire land rental agreements, often confidential, before communities are officially notified.

Residents often accuse industry of minimizing their concerns over impacts to wildlife, roads, aesthetics, property values, utility bills, health, topsoil and water quality. 

Yet climate change jeopardizes those same things, and land rental and municipal payments can be a lifeline. The construction of solar and wind farms can divide towns and neighbors. Public hearings quickly get messy. 

Organizers have mounted challenges, playing out in boardrooms, courthouses and the Legislature. Several towns enacted restrictions on renewable energy projects, a push supported by Farmland First, a central Wisconsin advocacy and fundraising group. Last year, a developer sued two Marathon County towns over their wind farm rules.

President Donald Trump is the latest to seed doubt over the merits of large-scale renewable projects after issuing a Jan. 20 executive order that suspends federal permitting for any wind farm while agency officials review government leasing and permitting practices.

The bill: The proposal requires solar and wind developers to obtain approval from every city, village and town in which a facility would be located before the Public Service Commission could greenlight the project.

Senate Bill 3’s authors, Rep. Travis Tranel, R-Cuba City, and Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, said the measure responds to constituents who feel their concerns over continued development in the Driftless Area continue to fall on deaf ears.

“We are hoping to kick-start a conversation because the way I view it now, renewable energy projects are essentially the wild wild West,” Tranel said. “People have figured out that they can profit exorbitant amounts of money off these projects, and they are just popping them up left and right, and our current attitude is long-term ramifications be damned, and I don’t think that that makes any sense.”

Currently, the commission reviews proposals for energy facilities with a capacity of at least 100 megawatts. For scale, an average wind turbine in 2023 had a capacity of 3 ½ megawatts. A megawatt of solar generation might cover 7 ½ acres.

Local governments review projects less than 100 megawatts in capacity, but municipalities can impose restrictions on solar and wind farms only in limited instances, such as demonstrating they will protect public health or safety — a tall order. Additionally, municipalities that enact siting restrictions on wind farms cannot impose criteria more stringent than commission rules.

The bill would apply to any solar or wind farm with a 15-megawatt capacity or more. If a municipality fails to take action within an allotted period, the proposed facility would be approved automatically. 

An identical proposal introduced during the previous legislative session, exclusively backed by GOP lawmakers, failed to receive a committee hearing.

Yea: Some of the bill’s backers view the influx of large energy projects as the harbinger of “utility districts” across Wisconsin’s rural spaces, primarily for the benefit of urbanites.

It’s not that proponents of local control snub clean energy, said Chris Klopp, a Cross Plains organizer who has joined challenges to transmission and solar projects. Rather, regulators could respond to climate change more equitably.

“This idea that you can just decide you’re going to sacrifice certain people, well, I think there’s a problem with that,” she said. “Who decides, and who gets sacrificed? None of that is a good conversation. It should be something that works for everyone.”

Nay: Representatives from EDP Renewables, NextEra Energy, Pattern Energy and Invenergy — developers with a Wisconsin presence — didn’t respond to requests for comment.

But former Public Service Commission Chair Phil Montgomery said local governments lack the agency’s battery of professionals it takes to evaluate whether an energy project would meet the state’s energy needs.

Empowering Wisconsin’s 1,245 towns, 190 cities and 415 villages to weigh the facts against their own standards would spell disaster for ratepayers, he said.

Michael Vickerman, former executive director of RENEW Wisconsin, a renewable energy advocacy nonprofit, said the bill unfairly targets wind and solar.

“You’re deciding that this industry will no longer be welcome in this state,” he said. “It becomes such an arbitrary and mysterious, unstable, unpredictable process that the developer says, ‘Screw it. I’ll just go to Minnesota. I’ll go to Illinois.’”

What’s next? More than 20 co-sponsors, all Republicans, signed on to the bill, and it has been referred to a Senate committee. Klopp hopes to rally more lawmakers to obtain a two-thirds, veto-proof majority.

Montgomery said even if it leads nowhere, the bill certainly sends a message to investors.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify information provided by former Public Service Commission Chair Phil Montgomery.

Bill Watch takes a closer look at what’s notable about legislation grinding its way through the Capitol. Subscribe to our newsletters for more from Wisconsin Watch.

Republican bill seeks more local control over wind, solar farms is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Jay Dee Nichols stamped and packed stiff willow branches between maple wood posts, with muffled crunches.

At 63, the semi-retired handyman from the Wisconsin city of Black River Falls has trapped beavers before. But he’s never heard of a mock beaver dam — much less constructed one.

“It gives you an appreciation for what beavers do,” Nichols said over the shrill beeping of a skid loader. A scratch on his forearm oozed blood, drying into a scarlet smudge.

“They’re one of the hardest-working animals out there, I guess.”

Nichols’ muck boots sloshed in a pool of water that already was forming behind the freshly constructed beaver dam analog, or BDA. The semi-porous wooden structures are often installed across streams to redirect water or capture sediment.

Nichols and three other workers were as busy as beavers for a week in October constructing 12 of them in a forested wetland. 

It’s all part of Jim Hoffman’s latest project.

The BDAs span an unnamed, man-made channel that drains overflow from a reservoir on Hoffman’s cranberry farm, north of Alma Center in Jackson County. The water runs into South Fork Halls Creek, a trout stream where actual beavers have taken up residence.

Hoffman, 60, hopes the BDAs, which could pool up to 1.7 acre-feet of water during floods, improve water quality, stabilize eroded stream banks and enhance wildlife habitat. Most of all, he seeks to trailblaze a path through the state’s onerous dam-permitting process so other Wisconsin landowners can follow in his footsteps.

“There’s a lot of different streams and tributaries that could benefit from this,” Hoffman said.

As average Wisconsin temperatures and precipitation increase in response to climate change, scientists, environmentalists and regulators point to the promise of nature-based solutions. 

Enter the beaver.

North America’s largest rodent is infamous for wood munching. Where they chew, wetlands often follow. The natural sponges filter water and offer flood protection.

The U.S. once was home to 60 million to 400 million beavers, which inhabited a range extending from the northern Mexican deserts to the Arctic tundra. But European and American settlers hunted them to near extinction.

As their population dwindled and agriculture and urban development expanded, wetlands disappeared. Wisconsin, like the rest of the country, lost roughly half since the late 1700s.

Without maintenance from nature’s “ecosystem engineers,” many of the nation’s once multi-threaded streams also became single-channeled and incised — disconnected from their floodplains. When this happens, water tables sink, water temperature increases and plants die. If torrential floodwaters funnel through the simple stream systems, they flush out wildlife and wood.

Nature can repair itself, but the process of restoring stream complexity can take millennia. Mock beaver dams can jump-start the process, reducing the timing to mere decades.

They also can slow the flow of runoff and allow watersheds to store more water. Hoffman sees their potential to limit flooding in Wisconsin, potentially saving taxpayer dollars and creating wildlife habitat.

Watershed councils, conservation districts, Indigenous tribes, and state and federal natural resources agencies frequently deploy them in the American West. But their use in Wisconsin, a state with a historically tempestuous relationship with beavers, is novel. Many regulators believe the critters’ dams harm trout, and the state’s fisheries and forestry divisions contract with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to wipe out beavers that live on designated streams.

Fewer than a dozen permitted projects that incorporate BDAs or similar wooden structures have been built in Wisconsin to date. The Department of Natural Resources recently approved two on trout stream tributaries, signaling an openness to test their potential despite concerns from fisheries managers. Construction is underway in other Mississippi River basin states too, including Iowa, Kentucky and Missouri.

Wisconsin regulators generally treat BDAs as dams that impound water, making for an arduous and expensive permitting process. 

Hoffman spent more than a year and $20,000 to obtain his permit. He is the CEO of a vast Wisconsin construction company and has a running joke.

“The one thing you never do is call the DNR and ask them, ‘Do I need a permit for this?’” he said.

What are beaver dam analogs? 

A healthy streamscape requires space for water to slowly meander. That requires messy wood obstructions like fallen trees and debris-filled logjams.

Much like real beaver dams, the analogs obstruct water and disperse the flow across a wider area. Water pools above and below the dams, and upstream surface height increases.

Sediment accumulates behind the obstructions, sometimes transforming an upstream pool into a wetland and eventually a meadow. But nature’s randomness means beaver dams or analogs can fail.

BDAs are not in themselves a solution, experts say, but tools that initiate natural processes that mend degraded waterscapes. 

While their popularity increased in the 2000s, historic drawings indicate that small wicker and log dams were constructed as early as the 19th century to “correct” streams in France.

Construction these days hasn’t changed much, with workers pounding posts directly into a streambed and weaving willow or juniper branches between them. Gaps can be plugged with sediment. The analogs, which are biodegradable and transient, function well when constructed in sequence like natural beaver dam complexes. Proponents hope that using natural materials and hand labor reduces building costs, enabling more miles of restoration.

When human and beaver engineers meet

When Hoffman installed his cranberry marshes more than 20 years ago, a developer taught him an important marketing lesson: christen the business after the resource you are destroying. The developer named his housing division Fox Ridge. Hoffman, in turn, called his cranberry operation Goose Landing.

Yet, in Hoffman’s case, he didn’t necessarily displace geese. Hundreds occupy his reservoir on a given day, leaving droppings that serve as free fertilizer.

The 1,000-acre property serves as a laboratory of earthworks and a wildlife cornucopia. 

Hoffman, a Stanford engineer by training, returned to Wisconsin from San Francisco Bay in 1989 and joined the road construction business his great-grandfather started more than seven decades prior, before the United States had an organized highway system.

After starting the cranberry operation, Hoffman mined frac sand, then obtained his commercial fish farming license. Now, he’s stocked the former mining pits — since filled with water — with an angler’s dream: walleye, hybrid muskie, perch, crappie, bluegill and bass.

Hoffman sped past one of the ponds in his Ford Bronco, pointing out the artificial islands he created. To add vegetation, he grabbed trees by their rootballs and shoved them into the virgin soil.

“I like to change my environment,” he said. “I’m an earthmover by character — by business.”

Hoffman’s efforts to “rewild” his land led him to plant turnip and radish plots for deer along with oak trees to recreate a piece of Wisconsin’s historical savannas. He’s replaced row crops with prairie grass and intends to install an osprey nesting box on one of his ponds — even if it means the birds of prey eat his fish.

Mock beaver dams are Hoffman’s latest push.

His interest in them blossomed after he helped a Nordic skiing buddy release an orphan beaver on his property. They constructed a lodge for the two-year-old rodent, tucking in a stuffed teddy bear to keep it company.

“Well, it instantly swam into the pond, and that was the last we saw it,” Hoffman said.

In a section of forest far from the cranberry marshes, the drainage ditch turns into what appears to be a natural stream, which cuts through steep banks.

On both sides lies what resembles a 3- to 4-foot-tall effigy mound running perpendicular across the creek bed. Hoffman wonders if beavers were the original architects.

“It might be hundreds of years old,” he said. “I’m hoping the beavers come back here and say, ‘Well, we almost got a dam built!’”

Mock beaver dams used out West 

Science backs Hoffman’s belief in the restoration power of beaver dam analogs. In one of the first major studies, researchers evaluated their trout impacts and potential to reverse stream incision.

Bridge Creek, a high-desert watershed in north-central Oregon, bore the signs of livestock overgrazing and beaver removal. Following severe storms, the main channel gradually disconnected from the landscape’s floodplain — conditions that persisted even 20 years after cattle stopped chomping on surrounding vegetation.

The researchers monitored conditions before and after installing more than 130 BDAs in Bridge Creek. They compared those sections of creek to areas that lacked BDAs — some that beavers called home and others they did not.

Prior to the study, Bridge Creek contained some beaver dams, but they frequently blew out during major floods. Sediment didn’t have time to accumulate and reconnect the channel to the landscape.

But the BDAs acted as reinforcements. 

Beaver dams in the study area increased more than sevenfold within the first eight years after the scientists added them.

In the BDA sections, land inundated with water increased by 228% and side channels increased by a whopping 1,216%, considerably more than the Bridge Creek sections that lacked them.

As the analogs rehydrated the aquifer, vegetation increased. Groundwater killed off scrubby plants, such as sagebrush, and water-loving willow trees took root.

Could mock beaver dams block or fry fish? 

The impact of beavers on fish remains a hot topic in Wisconsin. For some, it’s axiomatic that beaver dams block trout passage — a belief with a long history.

But that wasn’t a problem at Bridge Creek.

The researchers tagged about 100,000 juvenile trout, enabling antennas to detect fish movement at specific stream locations. They surveyed the stream for more than a decade.

The scientists determined that the installation of mock beaver dams increased the survival, density and reproduction of juvenile trout. They detected no changes to upstream migration in the tagged trout despite the massive increase in human and beaver-made dams. Several spawners passed through upwards of 200 during their migration.

Other studies conducted in California concluded trout easily cross BDAs, either by jumping or swimming up side passages.

Another objection to beaver dams stems from the belief they invariably increase stream temperature: Beaver ponds increase a stream’s surface area, which is warmed by the sun.

But at Bridge Creek, water temperature remained constant or decreased, even during summer. The researchers suggested that pooled water upstream of the dams percolated into the ground, forcing cool groundwater to upwell downstream and mix with that on the surface. An offset to the sun.

The complexes affected temperatures in other ways. 

On one hand, they buffered water temperatures. Stream temperatures periodically fluctuate with day-night cycles and across seasons, but the mock beaver dams compressed the rises and falls. On the other hand, the complexes created variety, filled with warm and cold spots, offering fish a buffet to choose from.

Some studies have documented downstream warming from the analogs. And others from the upper Midwest have documented increased temperatures below natural beaver dam complexes and in beaver ponds, but academics have questioned the research’s scientific rigor.

Nick Bouwes, a Utah State University faculty member who worked on the Bridge Creek study and co-authored a manual that many consider the BDA bible, agrees that the structures could block fish or raise water temperatures in certain ecosystems in his native Wisconsin.

But until there is solid evidence, he said, ultimately those remain assumptions that should be studied.

“It makes you wonder what fish did 3- or 400 years ago when there was an order of magnitude more beaver and an order of magnitude more fish in these systems,” Bouwes said.

Upholding the public trust

In September, Mike Engel, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, oversaw the installation of beaver dam analogs at Briggs Wetland near Beloit, Wisconsin.

The workshop brought together ecologists, consultants, resource managers and regulators from local, state and federal agencies, most of whom dipped their toes into BDA waters for the first time.

Although passionate about such tools, Engel says beavers and BDAs aren’t a panacea for all degraded wetlands or a warming climate.

“There’s certainly people who will grab a hold of the cute, fuzzy critter and like the idea,” Engel said, standing atop a beaver dam that formed a network of ponds adjacent to the Briggs property. “But I think more people will be interested in managing the amount of water they have — whether they need more or they need less due to climate change.”

In other words, what would a well-functioning watershed look like, and what tools and techniques can achieve those ends? The case for mock beaver dams depends on the setting.

“Out West, they have miles and miles and miles of public land,” said Thomas Nedland, who conducts wetland and waterway permitting with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

If the BDAs fail, “all the water that’s backed up ends up going into the woods or the floodplain” without risk to infrastructure, he said. 

“That’s not quite the setting we have here in Wisconsin.”

Such projects might lead to conflicts with property owners, especially if beavers move in and enlarge the structures. They might swamp adjacent corn fields or flood a road or backyard.

Wisconsin’s public trust doctrine also requires regulators to consider the public’s access to natural resources when making permitting decisions. The Department of Natural Resources may impose requirements to maintain the rights to boat, swim and fish, even on artificial ditches that are considered navigable waterways.

Hoffman’s project rang alarm bells for the local county conservationist, who fears the BDAs will attract beavers to the area, leaving floods and unfishable streams in their wake.

Getting the dam permit 

State regulators must consider many factors in considering a beaver dam analog.

Throwing some sticks across a streambed is relatively simple, but several Wisconsin installations have relied upon consultants, federal workers or nonprofit organizations to navigate permitting.

“They’re really important devices. They have a lot of functionality. They’re very simple and inexpensive to install,” said Hoffman’s contractor, Clay Frazer, a restoration ecologist. 

“And they’re way too complicated to permit right now for the average person.”

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources required Hoffman to conduct hydrologic modeling and topographic surveying before regulators approved his BDAs, which stand roughly 3 feet high.

To satisfy regulators that the analog wouldn’t overturn when water pooled behind it, he had to load test the wooden posts.

Joel Pennycamp, a Hoffman Construction Company employee, strapped a scale around the top of one. Hoffman stood on the streambank holding onto the end of a neon orange string that stretched across the BDA. When Pennycamp tugged, each post could move no more than an inch. 

Analog proponents say the rigid requirements to build transient structures unnecessarily increase costs and dampen enthusiasm to use nature-based solutions for landscape repair. A potentially laborious permitting process also misses the broader point that process-based riverscape restoration is unpredictable.

“You don’t have to be an engineer. You don’t have to be able to operate large machinery. You’re not going to completely redesign a stream to what you think it should be,” Bouwes said. “Let the stream figure it out.”

One permitting difficulty stems from, in several instances, the state’s classification of the porous structures as dams. Regulators and applicants debate a principle point: Does a mock beaver dam actually impound water or, as researchers say, merely slow or delay it? State employees say they lack latitude to interpret because BDAs, plain and simple, fit the legal definition.

“I often hear back from applicants and they’re like, ‘Well, it’s not very big,’ or, ‘It’s not intended to be there for long,’ or whatever,” said Uriah Monday, a state dam safety engineer. “But they always acknowledge that they need that pool of water to create the energy it’s going to take to do whatever they’re trying to achieve.”

For instance, he said, a raised pool of water is necessary to saturate wetlands, carve stream meanders and trap sediment upstream.

Hoffman’s stream tributary may be artificial, but the state still considers its waters navigable and thus protected. Normally, when dams obstruct public passage, the Department of Natural Resources requires the posting of a portage route. 

For now, the agency isn’t requiring it, but Hoffman hopes to run with the idea.

“So I’m having some signs made up for the beavers in case they get confused when they’re swimming upstream and hit the dam,” he said, grinning widely.

The department also has authorized BDAs through a streamlined general permitting process. Hoffman’s mock beaver dams, however, did not meet the criteria to qualify.

“I don’t blame the DNR for it,” he said. “It’s just that they don’t have a system to accommodate our request.” 

Kyle Magyera, who performs government outreach with the Wisconsin Wetlands Association, believes regulators should carve out exceptions from the dam rules. 

Monday thinks the existing permitting system can work, as it already has, and will ease as the department learns more about the structures. That will include monitoring at Briggs Wetland and Goose Landing.

“We’re actually hopeful too,” Nedland said. “If there’s an efficient, cost-effective way for people to do these kinds of projects in a much easier way that results in less disturbance to the landscape, like boy, that’s a win.”

BDA permitting challenges are not unique to Wisconsin. Even the Bridge Creek researchers were unable to conduct a follow-up round of restoration due to regulatory hurdles.

“It seems like every state, you have to go through the growing pains of getting people familiar with these approaches,” Bouwes said. “When they see what we’re actually doing — we’re throwing sticks in the stream to slow the water down — they become a lot more comfortable with it.”

Balancing human and beaver needs

By mid-afternoon at Hoffman’s farm, evidence of the day’s construction littered the ground adjacent to the channel where the BDAs stood: empty plastic Powerade bottles, gasoline cans, a chainsaw.

Before getting off work for the day, Nichols and Pennycamp loaded it onto a utility vehicle. Hoffman, meanwhile, browsed through a printout of his state-issued permit, reviewing the details through reading glasses he perched across his nose.

“‘The water is a cool-cold headwater. The proposed dam will not result in significant adverse effects on this resource upon compliance with the conditions in the order,’” he read aloud. “In other words, don’t flood too much, don’t warm the water up too much. Okay, well we’ll debate that later.”

He flipped the page.

The beavers living at Hoffman’s farm are dispersing across the property. One colony chewed down some of his pines and aspens and plugged a culvert, expanding the shoreline as part of a project Hoffman didn’t plan.

It doesn’t bother him because he has more trees to spare and wants to live among the rodents, but he doesn’t begrudge beaver-bothered people. The critters create profound impacts.

Humans and beavers share a common drive to engineer their environment to live. 

“We’ve got to find a way to balance the different needs of each species,” Hoffman said. “You know, us included.”

Why is he doing all this? Permitting, pounding, portage-routing. Really, why bother?

Hoffman’s campaign is more than just a new permitting process. It’s an exhortation to the state to reconsider its treatment of beavers. If he can show that mock beaver dams don’t heat the water or block fish, perhaps the state will stop removing beavers and their dams from trout streams.

“We’re going to hopefully show to them that the beavers in the ecosystem are actually beneficial,” Hoffman said.

Going through the trouble is simply part of a kindred ecosystem engineer’s balancing act.

This story was produced in partnership with the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network, of which Wisconsin Watch is a member. It was also reported with support from the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems. Sign up for Wisconsin Watch’s newsletter to get our news straight to your inbox.

An ecosystem engineer’s vision: mock beaver dams to restore Wisconsin wetlands is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.