Park board approves recommended beaver management plan

The Hill County Park Board voted to implement the beaver management policy provided to them by their Rules and Regulations Committee, with the caveat that the board may implement proposed language changes in later meetings.

The policy states that beaver provide significant benefits to the ecosystem of the park but that some of their population can be removed for the sake of the park's aesthetics, facilities, infrastructure and public spaces.

The policy has the stated goal of using population control to avoid these problems when necessary but also to protect the beaver population when it is not causing problems, all at the direction of the Beaver Creek Park superintendent.

The policy gives the superintendent the authority to make determinations as to how beaver populations should be dealt with, whether that is through traditional methods of population control including trapping, or alternative non-lethal methods methods like flow devices, though approval from the board will be necessary to implement these alternative methods once they are funded.

Board members briefly discussed some proposed language changes by retired range-land management specialist Lou Hagener of Havre, but upon looking at the first proposed change it became clear board members needed more time to look at and consider their positions on each change.

Questions were raised about whether the first language change would hamstring Beaver Creek Park Superintendent Chad Edgar's ability to respond to immediate beaver-related problems, by requiring decisions being made via an objective collaborative effort.

Hagener has said the intention of many changes like this is to take pressure off of Edgar as he thought the policy put too much responsibility on an already-busy man.

Edgar said if the language means he needs to come to the board to make simple decisions about management then emergency mitigation efforts will be hamstrung.

Before the conversation went much further Hill County Commissioner Mark Peterson, also a member of the Park Board, suggested that the policy be passed without any revisions, but with the understanding that the language changes may be considered individually in future meetings, as he thinks some of the changes are very reasonable.

That was agreed upon and voted for unanimously.

Edgar also requested that the matter of trapping costs be put on the next agenda, as it needs to be addressed before the trapping season begins in mid-October.

The board also listened to a presentation by Hagener on his reasons for wanting more cause-focused monitoring and data collection on the park.

Hagener said the park keeps records of many things on the park, but by enhancing their data-recording methods and collecting more information about grazing, haying, weather and other things they can better adapt management strategies to improve the health of the park.

Hagener said the park currently looks at short term aspects of the area's health like erosion, production and annual utilization, but by looking at longer-term aspect of the park like plant community, biodiversity, density, and species composition structure they can improve significantly.

He said recent work done by Montana State University-Northern Professor Terri Hildebrand indicating that contamination in Beaver Creek likely originates primarily from outside the park is evidence that more careful monitoring of causal factors can reveal useful information about the state of the park.

Hagener said this problem, the lack of cause monitoring, is common in places like Beaver Creek Park, but some fairly small changes can improve things.

He presented the board with a potential strategy for rapid weather recording which will give a more robust record that will allow the park to make better predictions and adjustments to management in the future.

Peterson pointed out that different kinds of grasses and plants respond better to different amounts of rain at different times of year and Hagener said that is exactly why data like this can be valuable.

Hagener also talked about additional factors the park could be taking into account when it comes to grazing, factors that would provide more accurate estimates of actual use and help adapt how the park handles grazing by working around important growing and recovery periods for plant communities.

In the past, he said, before the days of interactive spreadsheets, this kind of proposed change would create a tremendous amount of work, but as someone who has lived through the advent of computer spreadsheets he thinks it's much more feasible now than ever.

He said he thinks the park is in a position to implement these changes and asked that the board and park management consider them.

"You can't manage what you can't measure," Hagener said.

He also provided a brief update on current conditions out on the park, saying the weather has improved, but they're not out of the woods yet.

Edgar also provided an update on park activities during the meeting.

He said usage surprisingly low in August overall, which he attributed to the heat and campfire ban, which was lifted in time for Labor Day weekend, which he said went smoothly.

He also said the recent creation of the summer deputy warden has been amazingly helpful for the park.

Edgar said Montana State University Northern's football team recently spent a day in the park and asked if there was anything they could do to help him out, so he had them go up and down the nature trail with loppers, cleaning it up, which he said was a blast.

"It was a cool day," he said.

He said by all indication the team and their coach had a good time as well, and they're looking to come back next year.

Edgar said Northern's welding class also recently asked him if there was anything they could do to contribute.

He said they are looking to build a new arch and gate for the front of park's lodge, and while some iron for the project has been donated there will still be some cost involved.

He said the park, despite the uncertainty of the pandemic, has done very well, accumulating a significant amount of reserve funds in the past year as a result of a conservative spending plan implemented to mitigate the possible effects of the pandemic.

Edgar said $20,000 of that reserve will be put in the capital improvement fund, and the remainder, around $19,000 will be put toward repair and maintenance.

During the meeting Edgar also asked the board for permission to renumber campsites because the current system has become confusing.

He said he'd like to implement a system where each site would have a letter based on the area it in, Lions, Shambo etc., followed by a number.

Board members said that seems like a good idea and they had no objections.

Edgar also reported that there have been no car-cattle crashes so far this year.

The next Park Board meeting will be at 5:30 p.m. in the Hill County Courthouse Timmons Room Oct 4.

The deadline for agenda requests is Sept. 20.