Connecticut
Beavers making comeback in Connecticut. Here’s why that matters.
In this Sept. 12, 2014, photo, a tagged young beaver explores a water hole. (AP Photo/Manuel Valdes, File)
Engineers, commodity, lost keystone species, and pest — beavers have played many roles in Connecticut’s landscape.
Their survival is also an astounding conservation success story, according to a new book by local author Leila Philip who explores our relationship with beavers. Where they were once expatriated from the state by the fur trade and trapped to near extinction, in recent decades their numbers have rebounded.
A 2001 state report estimated that there were around 8,000 individual beavers in Connecticut, but it’s unknown how many more there are now as they’re not actively tracked by the state. But a University of Connecticut project seeks to map where beavers are returning, to better understand their growth and recovery.
And then, how to coexist alongside them and their often beneficial water manipulating habitats.
Most people don’t spend much time thinking about beavers, and many people have never seen one. Philip said she was driven to understand beavers, and their significance after a chance encounter while walking her dog in her hometown forests of Woodstock.
“I heard that iconic beaver slap, but I didn’t know what it was,” she said. “I thought a gun had gone off, truly.”
But when she looked for the source of the sound, she didn’t find a hunter, nor did she find what was normally a muddy clearing in the trees. Instead she found a silvery pond glinting in the sun, the stillness cut by a little brown head swimming back and forth.
“I was transfixed because of the tenacity of this animal,” said Philip. “I came out to watch the beaver every day and saw the transformation of this wet part of the woods into a beaver pond and it was one of the most incredible things I’d ever seen.”
Beavers are native to North America. The iconic rodents sport large paddle-shaped tails, webbed paws and teeth laced with iron. They build dams out of small trees, mud and sticks to serve as fortifications for their lodges, dens built out in the water that create dams.
There were millions of beavers on the continent when European settlers arrived. Philip said the scale of beavers on the landscape made the dense acres of trees a “waterworld of great spreading fans of waters throughout the forests.”
“That’s what we’ve lost,” Philip said. “We filled in 50 percent of our wetlands and that’s a problem for us now because those wetlands play such an important function in cleaning our water, slowing our water so it recharges the aquifers.”
The fur trade was critical for the formation of Connecticut as a colony, and eventually a state. Philip said beavers were essential for jump-starting transatlantic trade. She pointed to John Jacob Astor, the first known multi-millionaire U.S. businessman who had made his money on the back of a beaver fur monopoly.
“By the 1900s the engines of capitalism are getting going in North America on the backs of the beaver,” said Philip. “They trapped, they trapped and they trapped them out. They almost exterminated them.”
By the mid-1800s, beavers were all but locally extinct as over-hunting moved them farther north. Early conservationists worked to bring them back. Some were reintroduced to the Yale Forest in 1914. Other reintroductions saw them recolonize local river systems.
But it took until the 1960s for them to truly rebound. Philip said this was due to many river systems being gummed up with industrial uses and the reforestation of farmlands. The beavers finally had habitats that connected, and they thrived.
Geoffery Krukar, a wildlife biologist with the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection said the state didn’t have hard numbers on beaver populations here, but he thinks there are a lot of them out there. He said that last year, in 2023, he issued more permits outside the regular trapping season than ever before for incidents of “beaver nuisances” where beavers are removed for threatening property and safety.
“We think they are an important component of the habitat and landscape, but sometimes public safety has to come first,” said Krukar. “You can’t have roads being undermined or going underwater.”
Krukar said that he has denied permit requests for beaver removal, if it lacked a valid reason.
“Like, they just aesthetically didn’t want to see trees getting cut down at the edge of a swamp,” Krukar said of some requests. “I’ll try to preach coexistence in those situations.”
But there are some locals that don’t want to see beavers removed from their community. About five years ago in South Windsor beaver problems made quite a splash when they created a dam in Nevers Park. DEEP had authorized the town to trap and kill the beavers who after taking up residence had felled 200 trees and caused flooding in the park with a dam. When they found out, outraged locals signed a petition demanding the town find a way to share the public land with the beaver population.
Krukar echoed Philip, saying that beavers were one of the few animals that can create needed habitat on the landscape. He said that beaver wetlands were magnets for biodiversity and supported many kinds of life.
Sarah Heminway, director of the northeast region of the Connecticut Audubon Society said her organization learned to co-exist with beavers. At the Trail Wood Sanctuary in Hampton, beavers had made an acres-wide pond that would breach every 10 years or so in heavy rains. But Heminway didn’t want to get rid of the beavers.
“We had many people saying, oh just trap the beavers and take them somewhere else,” said Heminway. “But this is perfect beaver habitat, there’s no sense in taking them away because they’re going to come back.”
Heminway reached out to the Beaver Institute in Massachusetts and had them come assess the pond. They settled on installing pond levelers — massive 40-foot pipes that extend to the middle of the pond that work as drains and keep the water from growing beyond a certain depth. The levelers worked, and last year’s heavy rains didn’t burst the dams.
“We need to stop treating everything as if it is expendable,” said Heminway. “That’s been the attitude since the Europeans came over on the Mayflower.”
She pointed to the regrowth of New England’s forests, the return of coyotes, deer, bears, fisher cats and beavers. She said that these animals have a place here.
“We have to live in balance,” said Heminway.
Philip cites the story at the Trail Wood Sanctuary in her book “Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America,” as an example of fruitful coexistence, noting that in drought months, the beaver pond helped sustain well water in the area. She has data to back this up too, pointing to a 2020 study that estimated that beavers near Milwaukee could provide 1.7 billion gallons of stormwater storage to the tune of about $3.3 billion in ecological services.
“Underneath the beaver pond is an invisible sponge in the ground,” said Philip. “If you have a beaver pond that holds a million gallons of water, about three million gallons of water are being held in the soil underneath. That’s a huge sponge that’ll recharge a creek when a drought comes.”
Philip hopes her book, and talking to locals in Connecticut can help change our perception of beavers.
“There are many ways in which people realize how it is in their interest to have beavers,” said Philip. “They can reverse our cultural habit of thinking we need to kill beavers.”
CONNECTICUT (WTNH) — The United States military carried out “large scale” strike inside Venezuela in the early hours of Saturday morning, capturing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, according to President Donald Trump.
Leaders in Connecticut are responding to the military action.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) shared the following statement.
“If we’re starting another endless war, with no clear national security strategy or need, count me out. Maduro is a cruel criminal dictator, but President Trump has never sought approval from Congress for war as the Constitution requires – and our military deserves. We’ve seen several Administrations lead us into conflicts without objectives or timelines and with disastrous consequences. President Trump has also articulated no clear end game to prevent further chaos, violence, and bloodshed in Venezuela. The American people deserve—and Congress should demand—facts and clarity.”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) called the strike the start of an “illegal war” between the U.S. and Venezuela.
“President Trump thinks he is above the law. He steals from taxpayers. He thumbs his nose at the law. And now, he is starting an illegal war with Venezuela that Americans didn’t ask for and has nothing to do with our security. How does going to war in South America help regular Americans who are struggling? How does this do anything about drugs entering the U.S. when Venezuela produces no fentanyl? What is the actual security threat to the United States? And what happens next in Venezuela? He cannot answer these questions – and that’s why there was no briefing to Congress to explain this action, and no briefing scheduled. And Maduro’s illegitimate election does not give the president the power to invade without congressional approval, nor does it create a national security justification. That contention is laughable. This is about satisfying Trump’s vanity, making good on the long standing neocon grudge against Maduro, enriching Trump’s oil industry backers, and distracting voters from Epstein and rising costs.”
Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) said the Trump administration acted without congressional approval.
“Maduro is an illegitimate ruler, but I have seen no evidence that his presidency poses a threat that would justify military action without Congressional authorization, nor have I heard a strategy for the day after and how we will prevent Venezuela from descending into chaos. Secretary Rubio repeatedly denied to Congress that the Administration intended to force regime change in Venezuela. The Administration must immediately brief Congress on its plan to ensure stability in the region and its legal justification for this decision.”
State Senate Republican Leader Stephen Harding (R-Conn.) shared that he hopes Maduro is brought to justice, calling him an “integral culprit” in the “narcotic ring” in the United States.
“President Maduro has been an integral culprit in fostering the narcotic ring in our country which has killed far too many Americans. I hope he is brought to justice and we can continue to address the substance abuse crisis that our state and country continues to face.
The Chairman of the Connecticut Republican Party Ben Proto shared the following statement.
“President Trump promised to stop the flow of drugs into the US that have been killing millions of Americans. Nicolas Maduro, who declared himself President, while getting about 30% of the vote in the last so called free election in Venezuela, was given multiple warnings to stop the flow of drugs from his country into America, was offered help by the Trump administration in stopping the flow, but he continued to, not only allow the flow of drugs, but condone it and profit from it. Presidents have long used their constitutional authority to intervene in other countries when those countries posed a danger to America and Americans. President Trump did just that. Unfortunately Democrats, particularly Jim Himes, Chris Murphy and Dick Blumenthal are more interested in playing politics than in protecting Americans. Nearly 1,000 Connecticut residents died from drug overdoses in 2024 and we have seen an increase in overdoses in 2025. If only Democrats cared as much about Americans as they do about a drug lord running another country who profits from the death of Americans.“
Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-Conn.) demanded that Congress must be briefed before further action.
“As information about U.S military strikes in Venezuela unfold, I have more questions than answers. Nicolas Maduro is a brutal dictator who caused so much harm to his people. However, as Americans we must seriously weigh the consequences of attacking a sovereign nation and committing to “run Venezuela.” Congress must be briefed immediately, before this situation continues to escalate. I will comment further as credible information becomes available to Members of Congress.“
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) shared the following statement, claiming that there could be “severe repercussions for American interests.”
“President Trump’s unilateral decision to attempt a regime change operation in Venezuela by using military force to capture Nicolas Maduro and declaring, ‘we will run the country’, threatens global order and is a fundamental violation of the Constitution, which gives Congress the responsibility of authorizing major military actions that could have severe repercussions for American interests.
“America’s unprecedented global strength and prosperity was built on this principle of restraining military force through democratic bodies like Congress. President Trump has shredded this principle, and along with it has destroyed American credibility and emboldened our adversaries to act with similar aggression. This new foreign policy that President Trump and his advisors have used to justify this act of war, including invoking the 200-year-old Monroe Doctrine as a justification for America to do whatever it pleases in the Western Hemisphere, is the exact same reasoning that China would use to justify invading Taiwan, and which Russia has used to assault Ukraine.
“President Trump has also now threatened Cuba with similar language, and is preparing a giant corrupt giveaway to oil companies by claiming that the United States will acquire Venezuela’s oil. This is corruption of the highest order. Maduro was an authoritarian who stayed in power despite the will of the people, but that does not justify the United States in starting a war to benefit some of the world’s wealthiest corporations.
“President Trump did all of this without the consent of Congress, and without providing any details or day-after plans. The full consequences of this act of war will not be known for some time, and they may require putting American boots on the ground in Venezuela, as the President has said he was prepared to do. The American people do not want to be dragged into another endless conflict distracting from the rising cost of living and the affordability crisis. Whatever happens next, the responsibility will be squarely with President Trump and his contempt for the Constitution and for Congress.”
Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) echoed the statements of his fellow Democrats.
“This is yet another authoritarian power grab by Donald Trump. As he indicated in his address, it’s clear it’s about the oil!!! And securing that oil!!! And securing it with the use of our brave men and women in the United States military!!! The Constitution entrusts Congress, not the President, with the power to declare war for a reason. It’s Congress’s responsibility to decide whether the nation goes to war or not! That’s why I’m joining with others in calling on the President to immediately brief Congress—and for Congress to assert its authority under the Constitution and the War Powers Act—to let this President know he does not have the authority to unilaterally commit our country to yet another endless war.“
This is a developing story. Stay with News 8 for updates.
ALLERTON, NY. (WFSB) – A Connecticut teenager has died and another is injured following a shooting in New York on Saturday night.
A 911 call reported shots were fired inside of a building located on Adee Avenue in Allerton at around 6 p.m., according to the New York Police Department.
When crews arrived, they found a male suffering from a gunshot wound to the chest.
On scene officers also found a 14-year-old near Laconia Avenue that was also suffering from a gunshot wound to the left arm.
First responders quickly responded to the scene and transported both victims to nearby hospitals.
The male they initially located was in critical condition but later died due to the extent of his injuries.
Officials have now identified the victim as 15-year-old Eric Aitken of Waterbury.
The 14-year-old remains in stable condition.
Police said no arrests have been made at this time.
This incident remains under investigation.
No further details were released.
Eyewitness News will provide more details as soon as they become available.
Copyright 2025 WFSB. All rights reserved.
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