03/01/2026
SAVE THE BEAVERS!
Have you ever been fortunate enough to see one of Pennsylvania’s keystone species, the American Beaver, in a setting other than a zoo?
Did you know that American Beavers have set up a lodge and dam very close to Devil’s Den on the Gettysburg Battlefield?
Are you aware that this lodge and dam, and possibly the beavers - depending on the time of day - are easily visible from Crawford Avenue, just a few minutes from the Emmitsburg Road?
Early American settlers trapped the beavers nearly to the point of extinction. By the time of the Civil War, there were no beavers left in Pennsylvania.
Now a family of beavers has attempted to call Crawford Avenue their home. Park service biologists have done an incredible job of mitigating the effects of these new residents so that monuments and roads will not be affected by their colony.
But “someone” has decided that the beavers need to go and the park has been instructed to return the area along Crawford Avenue to the way it looked in 1863! It doesn’t matter that the beavers dam has attracted many new animal species to the area or that it attracts many nature lovers to the park on a regular basis throughout the year. It doesn’t matter that ecosystems with beavers are far healthier, for humans and non-humans alike, than those without them.
The rationale for the directive is that there were no beavers there in 1863! Well, whose fault do you think that was? Certainly not the beavers’ fault!
If you were to add together all the roadways, buildings, monuments, and signs (that weren’t on the battlefield in 1863 either), I am certain you would come up with a much larger area than the area that has been changed by the beaver colony.
Have we learned nothing since the eradication of the beavers in colonial days? Do we still have to engage in a “war” on these grounds instead of learning to co-exist with nature?
Please let your local legislators know where you stand on this topic. That park belongs to all of us - not just a few folks who aren’t wise enough to understand what a treasure this colony is.
As William Shakespeare said, “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” Shouldn’t we be striving for kinship in a place that has already seen enough death and destruction?
Linette Mansberger
