Beaver Death Mystery Remains Unsolved

EVANSTON, IL — The cause of death of trio of beloved beavers on the Northwestern University campus remains a mystery after their bodies were allowed to decompose before they could be examined by experts.

The group of beavers had been spotted in the lagoon beside the lakefill on Northwestern's campus since at least 2018, according to past reports.

The beavers attracted renewed attention during last year's restrictions associated with the coronavirus outbreak in Illinois, with dozens of people regularly gathering for early-morning beaver-spotting.

One beaver was discovered dead on July 17 and two more on July 19, according to Evanston RoundTable. Two Evanston community members, Judy and Sarah Cochran, told the paper they contacted a wildlife biologist with the Cook County Forest Preserves who was interested in performing a necropsy on the beavers.

Despite contacting several university departments in an effort to ensure professional examination of the beaver remains, the sisters told the RoundTable, by the time they could be sent to the forest preserve, their condition was so badly deteriorated that there was no way to determine what caused their deaths.

The few messages the Cochrans received from university representatives were "patronizing and uninformative," they said.

But Cook County Forest Preserve and Northwestern representatives disputed the Cochrans' version of events.

"When our chief wildlife biologist was contacted, he asked about the state of the animals and was able to determine that it was not feasible to undertake an effective necropsy," said forest preserve spokesperson Carl Vogel.

"The beavers were never sent to the forest preserve," Northwestern spokesperson Jon Yates told Patch. "We were advised by the forest preserve that a necropsy could not be performed so the remains were not sent."

In April, Yates told the Daily Northwestern that university and city officials had been discussing how to handle the situation.

“While we have not decided the best approach to mitigating the beavers this spring, we continue to talk with experts and interested parties,” Yates said.

No further information about the timeline of the university's response to the beaver deaths was available Monday. Any additional details received will be added here.

Rachel Siegel, president of the Illinois Beaver Alliance, told the Chicago Sun-Times that beavers reduce the risk of flooding by slowing water flows to handle increasingly intense rainstorms.

“Our river system is designed to remove water from the area as fast as possible, but a slower system with many channels and wetlands would be healthier,” Siegel told the paper. “If humans learned to live with beavers, we’d solve our problems.”

In Illinois, beavers are protected as one of 14 species of furbearers. With a license, hunters can trap an unlimited number of them from mid-November to March. Beavers that threaten public health or damaging property can be removed with a nuisance animal removal permit, according to state natural resources officials.

According to the most recent fur harvest survey from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, a total of 12,177 beaver pelts were sold in Illinois in the 2019-20 season, a 225 percent increase over the prior year.

Since last month's deaths, at least two surviving beavers have been spotted in the Northwestern lagoon, according to the RoundTable, making it less likely that recent beaver deaths were caused by a communicable disease.