Lately, Vermont’s news cycle has been a bit… intense.
There was the fatal shooting of a Vermont border patrol agent, which revealed a multi-state network of crime involving “vegan Sith” ideologists. Yesterday, state officials scrambled to understand a (now rescinded — maybe?) federal funding freeze from the Trump administration. A settlement revealed racism in Woodstock. And the governor gave a big budget address yesterday. Oh, and bird flu is becoming — concerning.
Let’s take a breather, shall we? Today, I bring you: beavers.
The House Environment Committee convened this morning to discuss a delightfully vague agenda item that read, “Beavers in Vermont.”
Members of the Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Nature Conservancy, and an environmental journalist (not me, unfortunately) provided a run-down of what we know about these whimsical — and important! — creatures and how they could, potentially, weaken destructive floods.
But before we get into all that, here are some fun facts from the testimony, as told by Brehan Furfey, which is (fur-real) the name of the furbearer project leader at the Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Beavers:
- Have transparent membranes over their eyes so they can see underwater
- Can stay underwater for 15 minutes
- Live for 8-10 years
- Have “fur-lined lips that close behind their incisors” so they can eat and swim at the same time (stop it!)
- Inhabit half-mile territories that include dams, yes, but also an underwater food cache and a lodge with a sleep chamber and multiple entrances
The fur market erased beavers from Vermont’s landscape in the 1600s, before Vermont was even colonized by Europeans — but don’t worry, they’re back.
Whether they’re back in appropriate numbers, however, was a question on which today’s experts disagreed.
Ben Goldfarb, author of the book Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, said beavers are “gradually recovering” from that erasure and their populations are “still very far from historic levels.” But Furfey said beavers are approaching their biological carrying capacity in Vermont — meaning, if they become more plentiful, their populations could become unhealthy. Other than keeping logs of human-beaver conflict, Vermont has not formally surveyed beaver populations.
Goldfarb, who testified after Furfey, said Vermont could stand to do more to protect beavers. In turn, we could be rewarded with reduced flooding due to beavers’ ability to build dams, which create wetlands and slow down water. While Vermont has a good program in place to reduce human-beaver conflict, he said, many of those conflicts still end with beavers killed in traps. (This conversation takes place one year after an extremely controversial legislative battle over trapping regulations, by the way.)
Will anything come out of this conversation about beavers? Rep. Amy Sheldon, D-Middlebury who chairs the Environment Committee, said it was just “useful background.”
The committee is “looking at natural solutions to our climate and biodiversity challenges, and beavers have a lot to offer us,” she said.
—- Emma Cotton
In the know
What do a former Republican governor, a former P/D senator, the president of the Vermont teachers union, the cofounder of OnLogic and the owner of Smugglers’ Notch Resort have in common?
The answer, as it turned out Wednesday afternoon, is: A desire to bring down health care costs. All the aforementioned — former Gov. Jim Douglas, former Chittenden County Sen. Chris Pearson, Don Tinney, Lisa Groeneveld, and Bill Stritzler — are members of a new coalition called Vermont Healthcare 911.
Citing data showing steep increases in Vermont health insurance premiums, and figures showing that Vermont hospitals spend a disproportionately high amount on administrative costs, Vermont Healthcare 911 announced Wednesday that it would work to contain hospital spending.
“Join us in our quest to address this pressing health care emergency,” Tinney told onlookers at a press conference in the Cedar Creek Room Wednesday afternoon.
It’s not yet clear how exactly the group plans to do that, however. Asked whether the group had specific legislation or action in mind, former Gov. Douglas said no.
“We’re not backing or opposing specific initiatives at this point,” Douglas said. “And we may never. But we want to work with policy makers to move that line in a different direction.”
— Peter D’Auria
Vermont students are still performing below pre-pandemic levels in reading and math, according to results released Wednesday from a national assessment of test scores from fourth and eighth graders.
While students’ math scores appear to be improving from where they were in 2022, reading scores have experienced continued decline from well before the Covid-19 pandemic.
Vermont’s scores are slightly lower than the national average for the first time in more than two decades, according to National Assessment of Educational Progress data. Across the country, most other states are still seeing test scores below 2019 levels.
“The NAEP results highlight a sense of urgency to promote student outcomes,” Vermont Secretary of Education Zoie Saunders said in a Wednesday press release. Read more about the test results here.
— Olivia Gieger
Mixed messages
President Donald Trump’s administration sent conflicting signals Wednesday over whether, or to what extent, the president’s plans to freeze vast swaths of federal funding were still in effect.
Meanwhile, in Vermont, uncertainty over the impacts of those plans was on full display at a meeting of a task force co-chaired by state Treasurer Mike Pieciak, which Pieciak set up earlier this month to assess the downstream impacts of Trump’s sweeping policy changes.
And Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark, who joined her counterparts in 22 other states in a lawsuit challenging Trump’s funding plans, said in a statement Wednesday that she was confident a second federal judge would issue an order blocking the proposal in the coming days. Read more here.
— Shaun Robinson
Read the story on VTDigger here: Final Reading: House Environment heard about the benefits of beavers.