Community Member

Illinois Beaver Alliance

Glenview, Illinois

The mission of the Illinois Beaver Alliance (IBA) is to educate about beavers’ ecological
importance and promote the use of modern tools to resolve human-beaver conflicts. The IBA notes that only a couple of hundred years ago, as many as 400 million beavers populated the U.S. but almost faced extinction due to commercial hunting. While the beaver population is now thriving, human-beaver conflicts remain, such as tree damage and dam-building that can lead to flooding. The organization teaches stakeholders about the role of beavers in engineering, maintaining and upgrading wetlands and healthy river systems; encourages low-tech, process-based river restoration; supports non-lethal ways to lessen human-beaver conflicts, such as by protecting trees with tree wrapping and using flow devices to prevent flooding caused by beaver dams; and shares information throughout Illinois and states within the Western Great Lakes and the Upper Mississippi River Basin with similar hydrology and water quality issues.

Rachel Siegel, IBA president, and Jeff Boland-Prom, a member of the IBA advisory board, display a beaver dam building activity for children featuring clay, rocks, moss, and sticks; and a model of how a beaver wetland functions. (Photo by Emily Siegel)

The IBA is based in Glenview, IL and operates under the guidance of a president, an advisory board, an expert advisory board and Alliance partners. The IBA educates and advocates for nonlethal human-beaver conflict management; and educates the public and stakeholders about the importance of beavers to Illinois freshwater ecosystems. The group lobbies the state government to update its beaver management policies, streamline the regulatory process to install pond levelers and culvert fencing, and participates in an annual Midwest Beaver Summit. The Summit brings together stakeholders across the Midwest to include leaders of environmental nonprofits, employees of state and federal natural resource management agencies, members of watershed alliances, agricultural and agroforestry stakeholders, environmental restoration businesses, academia, and land trusts to share information and offer solutions to coexisting with beavers.

For more information:

Midwest Beaver Summit Gets Some Media Attention, Daily Kos, September 2023

Beaver spotted at Northwestern’s lagoon, Evanston Roundtable, November 2023

Dead Beaver Mourned In Glenview, Journal & Topics, August 2021

Dorothy Terry

Dorothy Terry

Dorothy Terry is a journalist by profession, having worked as a daily newspaper reporter on both coasts and a contributing writer for several national magazines. She is a former Congressional press secretary and has worked as a communications manager and consultant for corporations and nonprofits.

Contact

Rachel Siegel, President

Website

Social Media

Climate Impacts

Drought, Flooding, Wildfires

Environmental Justice Concerns

Fighting Development/Destruction of Wildlife/Extinction of Species

Strategies

Community Land Trusts/Land Conservation, Green Infrastructure, Nature-Based Solutions, Policy Reform

501c3 Tax Deductible

No

Accepting Donations

Yes