LOGAN – Zootah is trying to raise funds for a beaver exhibit and research facility at their current location at Willow Park.
Troy Cooper, the director of Zootah, said they are excited about the addition to their zoo.
“We are working with Utah Division of Wildlife Resources and Utah State University’s Beaver Ecology and Relocation Center (BERC) to build the exhibit,” he said. “We are trying to raise $80,000 to fund it. We have already raised about $50,000 and we have applied for some grants.”
The BERC has a location in Millville that traps beavers that may be a menace to some landowners, evaluates them and returns them to landowners that could use the benefit of beavers on their ground.
“The beavers they bring to us may be young and may need to mature, then evaluated before being paired up and introduced to other places,” he said. “We expect to have four to eight of them at a time.”
BERC has become a valuable resource for landowners wanting to have the ecological benefits beavers have to offer.
“We expect to start building the enclosure this spring,” he said. “We will have cameras in. Last year we caught the lodge so people can watch them.”
Becky Yeager, the volunteer coordinator for the center, said the reason they set this up exhibit at Zootah is they occasionally trap one that is injured, or the kits may be too young to let go on their own.
“The Zootah facility is a short-term solution to beavers that are injured or are not ready to be released,” she said. ”The intent to is to get them paired up before releasing them in the wild. Some that our injured may never be released into the wild.”
BERC has captured as many as 75 beavers in a season; normally they average 45 captured beavers during a season.
Nate Norman, the lead field biologist, said they trap as many as they can during the season from snowmelt until the snow flies. He is trained and certified to trap and relocate beavers.
Norman works as a team with the Division of Wildlife Resources in his efforts to remove and relocate this specific animal.
The rescue organization has a place in Millville where the beavers are kept after being captured. The beavers are kept in what they call the Beaver Bunkhouse. The bunkhouse is where the beavers are evaluated checked and paired up.
The Beaver Bunkhouse is like a hotel with several different cages. Yeager makes sure the animals are checked in and quarantines them to make sure they have no diseases. The animals are cared for and when she determines they are healthy enough for the large rodents to be released in the wild.
Yeager said beavers are fascinating animals and she thinks people will enjoy watching the elusive animals at
Beaver ponds help hold water and allow the water to seep into the ground and recharge aquifers essential to mitigate droughts and climate change.