The Return of Beavers to Southern Piedmont Streams: Stream Restoration or Disruption?

The return of beaver to streams in Guilford County, North Carolina has encountered widely different responses in rural and urban landscape contexts. We found that beaver were viewed as positive agents of stream restoration in a project intended to rank potential riparian conservation easements in rural Guilford County. The response to beaver in two urban neighborhoods was to demand their eradication as a public nuisance. A primary goal of stream restoration in environmental planning is the recreation of natural conditions in streams altered by human action. Successful implementation of that goal will require clear definitions of what constitutes natural form and function, and human accommodations to the changes reintroduced species may bring to local environments.