Wisconsin’s Unsung
Climate Heroes
Today is International Beaver Day — and Wisconsin’s beavers have never needed our voices more. Here’s what’s happening, why it matters, and what you can do right now.
Beavers have been shaping Wisconsin’s waterways for thousands of years. Today, they’re doing something even more remarkable: fighting climate change from the inside out. Their dams slow floodwaters, recharge groundwater, filter pollution, and create wetland habitats that support more than 75% of Wisconsin’s wildlife species. No other animal on the planet delivers that kind of ecological return.
And yet, in Wisconsin, thousands of beavers are killed every year — sometimes in the very streams that most need their help.
🌿Why Beavers Are Wisconsin’s Most Important Animal
- Beavers create wetlands that support over 75% of Wisconsin wildlife species
- Beaver ponds raise local water tables, turning dry-season streams into year-round habitat
- Their dams filter agricultural runoff and improve downstream water quality
- Beaver wetlands provide critical refuge for trout, waterfowl, songbirds, bats, and pollinators
- In an era of drought and flooding, beavers are nature’s water storage system — for free
- North American beaver populations fell from an estimated 60 million to as few as 6 million due to the fur trade
[Download and share our full Beaver Fact Sheet — the most complete case for Wisconsin’s beaver — linked below.]
⚠️What’s Happening Right Now at the Wisconsin DNR
Wisconsin’s 2015–2025 Beaver Management Plan has expired. The DNR is drafting a new plan that will govern how beavers are managed across the state for the next decade — including whether thousands continue to be killed each year on trout streams.
The draft plan will be released this fall, followed by a public comment period, and then a vote by the Natural Resources Board.
That means your voice matters right now — and advocates are fighting hard to make sure the new plan is grounded in current science, not decades-old assumptions that have never been peer-reviewed.
One of the central battles: DNR fish biologists have long argued that beavers harm coldwater trout streams by warming and silting water. But an expanding body of research shows that beaver ponds actually create cool, deep refuges for juvenile trout and support the entire aquatic food web. The DNR’s own research justifying beaver removals has never been independently peer-reviewed.
Meanwhile, the numbers are staggering. In 2025 alone, federal trappers cleared dams along more than 1,550 miles of coldwater streams. The DNR stopped conducting aerial beaver population surveys in 2014, meaning the state doesn’t actually know how many beavers remain — or whether this level of removal is sustainable.
⚖️The Lawsuit You Should Know About
Bob Boucher is Wisconsin’s most tenacious beaver defender. Founder of Milwaukee Riverkeeper and president of the Superior Bio-Conservancy, he’s been fighting the DNR’s beaver elimination program for years — making 17 documented requests to meet with the agency, only to be turned away every time.
In June 2023, Boucher’s group filed a federal lawsuit against the USDA’s Wildlife Services division — the agency contracted by the DNR to kill beavers across Wisconsin. The suit centers on a devastating, decade-long record: over 28,000 beavers killed, nearly 15,000 beaver dams destroyed, and more than 1,000 river otters accidentally killed in indiscriminate traps — all funded by Wisconsin taxpayers.
In 2022 alone, Wildlife Services killed 3,492 beavers — more than three times the annual figure the agency projected in its 2013 Environmental Assessment. The lawsuit demands an updated assessment that accounts for new science on beavers’ ecological role and the actual damage this program is causing.
Boucher also threatened to sue the DNR directly after it refused to release its draft management plan for public review.
Boucher puts it plainly: “The Wisconsin DNR is the biggest destroyer of wildlife and wetlands in Wisconsin.” His open records research found that the DNR’s own internal correspondence acknowledges they’ve been overkilling — while the agency still refuses to accept that the beaver-trout relationship is a beneficial one.
He’s also co-author of a landmark 2020 study that modeled the value of restoring beavers to the Milwaukee River watershed — finding that beavers could provide the equivalent of $3.3 billion in stormwater storage infrastructure, protecting nearly 1,000 bridges and culverts from flooding. Wisconsin has been spending millions to kill the very animals doing that work for free.
✊What You Can Do to Protect Wisconsin’s Beavers
🦫Take Action for Beavers
The new Beaver Management Plan will shape Wisconsin’s wetlands for the next decade. Here’s how to make sure beavers have a fighting chance:
- Watch for the draft plan this fall — and be ready to comment. The DNR will open a public comment period before the Natural Resources Board votes. We’ll send you the details when the time comes.
- Share our Beaver Fact Sheet with friends, neighbors, and elected officials. The more people understand beavers’ ecological role, the harder it is to dismiss them as pests.
- Write a letter to your local paper. Letters to the editor about beavers, wetlands, and climate resilience reach audiences that advocacy emails don’t. We can help you draft one.
- Contact the Wisconsin DNR and urge them to adopt a science-based Beaver Management Plan grounded in peer-reviewed research — and to commission independent population surveys before making removal decisions.
- Support Speak for Wildlife so we can keep showing up for beavers, wolves, and every animal that needs a voice.
📄Our Beaver Fact Sheet
Click to access beavers-factsheet.pdf
We put together what we believe is the most thorough, plainspoken case for Wisconsin’s beaver anywhere. It covers their ecological role, the science on trout streams, the management plan process, and what a better approach looks like.
Read it. Share it. Send it to your DNR rep. This is the document we want decision-makers to have in hand when they sit down to write the next decade of beaver policy.
Today, International Beaver Day was created to honor Dorothy Richards — the “Beaver Woman” — who spent 50 years studying beavers in New York’s Adirondack Mountains and helped change the way Americans see them. She would recognize the same battle playing out in Wisconsin today. Let’s make sure this time, the beavers win.
With gratitude for every dam-builder out there doing their job,
Speak for Wildlife
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