Due to flooded fields, damaged roads and occasional deaths, beavers have played an important role in Canadian history and are now seen by many as a problem rather than a sense of national pride.

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Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario-The beaver may be one of Canada’s official national symbols, as iconic as the maple leaf, but Canadians have a love-hate relationship with this creature, and more people emphasize the second emotion .

Some communities in Alberta offer bounty for beaver tails. A mayor of Quebec called for their "eradication". The accusing fingers often correctly or incorrectly point out their ways for highway scouring, including some with fatal consequences. The farmers watched desperately as their land disappeared under the beaver pond.

For the second time in the past 15 years, Colleen Watson has witnessed beavers flooding 100 acres of woodland in New Brunswick, Atlantic Province this summer. Her grandfather was a blacksmith who learned from clients during the Great Depression. Charged.

"I like looking at nature, right? You can watch it and do your own thing," Mrs. Watson said, with more anger towards the animal than anger in her tone. "Hate is what it did to my property."

This large rodent played a huge role in Canadian history.

The European push to become aboriginal control of Canada was largely driven by the enthusiasm for beaver felt top hats, which wiped out the European population. For 200 years, one-third of Canada's existing territory was the exclusive trap of the Hudson Bay Company.

After the beavers were almost extinct in the mid-19th century, fashion changed and Canada's prolific beavers rebounded. They can now be found in more or less all forests of the country, and in 1975, the beaver was declared an official symbol of Canada.

Beaver dams are the most common source of complaints about beaver damage. When it was first constructed, the pond flooded the previously dry land. When a dam collapses—this usually happens after beavers and good builders abandon their ponds—the flood will damage rural roads and railways.

But some of the problems caused by beavers were more unusual, and they made local headlines.

This year witnessed many notable events: a beaver bit the fiber optic cable, cut off the Internet service in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, and a subway station in Toronto closed after a lost beaver visited.

Many crimes that may be related to beavers are attributed to “weather events” by the authorities. For example, the beaver pond is flooded by rain, but sometimes the police catch them on the spot (the beaver’s feet have webbed feet and the front paws do not). In May, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police obtained their beaver in a case involving stolen wooden fence posts. (The location of the crime reminds people that beavers are not the only cute but barely cute wildlife in Canada: the Porcupine Plains in Saskatchewan.)

Glynnis Hood, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Alberta and an unabashed beaver advocate, said it is difficult to figure out how much damage beavers cause each year. She participated in a research project that determined that beavers spend at least $3 million a year in Alberta cities and towns, but she called this a “very very low estimate” because many cities simply don’t know they spend on beavers. How much money-related repairs.

Professor Hood himself is no stranger to unwelcome beaver behavior. This year, a family of beavers dragged a few trees away from her house.

"But, you know, the trees will grow back," she said. "This is the consequence of living in a very natural area."

Although the professor said that she has no resentment towards these industrious animals, she does express sympathy to those who believe that "any beaver, whether it causes floods or fell trees, is one beaver too much."

Once beavers appear in your life, it is difficult to drive them away.

"I have talked to different people and they said that once they enter your land, it is difficult to drive them out," said Mrs. Watson, who is now trying to remove them from her woodland in New Brunswick.

Darcy Alkerton was a licensed catcher in Spencerville, Ontario for 45 of 61 years. He said that the experience taught him the value of taking action at the moment he discovered the beaver had entered.

"It's like ants: if you feed them and don't manage them, they will be overpopulated," he said.

Until 1987, Mr. Alkton’s beaver management techniques included blowing up dams.

One reason he stopped was: "You will never see an old man with explosives," he said another catcher told him.

Now, Mr. Alkton and 21 employees use pickaxes and shovels to demolish part of the dam to lower the water level.

According to Ontario’s law, beavers cannot move more than one kilometer after being caught alive. But Mr. Alkton said that any beaver who moves such a short distance is unlikely to accept the cue and will return soon.

This means that Mr. Alkton sometimes has to kill beavers very reluctantly.

"Some people say that the only good beaver is a dead beaver, I don't believe it," he said.

Beavers do have their ardent defenders, including those who condemn the tacit impulse to destroy any beaver dam, even those with little real risk. Some evidence suggests that complete beaver dams may actually reduce river flooding.

According to Guinness statistics, the longest dam in the world is located in Alberta. It is 2,788 feet long. The pond is built to provide defense and food. The cabins they live in can only be accessed from underwater, thus deterring most predators. In autumn, they cut down trees and build a winter food storage room under the ice.

On the remote gravel roads used by canoes and loggers in Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, Michael Lentz, author of "Dam Builders: The Natural History of Beavers and Their Ponds," points out a part of the grave Destroyed dam. He said that logging companies would walk along this road every spring to demolish any nearby dams.

"In most cases, it will not threaten the road," he said. "But they are worried that it will wash it off, and they need to spend money to fix it."

After stopping to admire a large birch tree felled by beavers, Mr. Langz confirmed their professional ethics. But when asked about their IQ, he hesitated.

"They have a strong instinct," he said. "But they are easy, easy to be trapped by wolves, and easy to be caught by wolves, so no, they are not the smartest animals on the street."

In addition, despite millions of years of experience, the beaver still hasn't figured out how to guide the tree to fall. "There are records of beavers being killed by fallen trees," Mr. Langz said. "I always hope to find a skeleton one day."

The beaver's reliance on instinct exceeds intelligence, which helped humans develop technology that allows at least a confrontation between two species, if not absolute peace.

A large pond in Gatineau Park in the Federal Wilderness of Quebec is near a road that doubles as a cross-country ski trail in winter. But it will not flood, thanks to something called a beaver deceiver.

If the dam is demolished or damaged, the sound of overflowing water will quickly put the beaver colony into repair mode. Beaver crooks-underwater pipes that can control the flow of water-reduce and maintain the depth of the pond without trickles.

Catherine Verreault, acting director of the park, stated that this deception helped the park avoid damage to roads and buildings without killing any of the more than 1,400 beavers.

In Ms. Verreault's view, Canadians generally underestimate beavers—and their exoticism towards non-Canadians.

During the visit of the park by wilderness officials from all over the world, the unexpected highlight was the discovery of the beaver, which caused the guests to get off the car and take pictures.

"These people have impressive animals: tigers, lions and elephants," she said. "But when the beaver came over and flapped its tail, they were very excited. It was perfect."