An elderly pedestrian wanders toward us, snatching up candy wrappers and soda cans with a long-handled trash picker. Ah, I think, a Good Samaritan, out for a spot of neighborhood cleanup. If anyone would appreciate local fauna, it’s this guy. I sidle up and point out the beaver, now being boosted into the truck.

The man gazes at me, his eyes a milky blue. “What are you going to do with him?”

Relocate him, I reply.

The man smiles. “Why don’t you just shoot the son of a bitch?”

I am momentarily flabbergasted. I sputter something about transferring the beavers to nearby public lands where they can build dams, create wetlands, and do some ecological good. He cuts me off.

“Good?” he laughs. “What good do they do? They’re always clogging up culverts and being a pain in the ass. You’re lucky you got to him before I did.” Before I can craft a response, he snaps up a crushed water bottle and strolls off.

The sentiment that Castor canadensis is little more than a tree-felling, water-stealing, property-flooding pest is a common one. In 2017, trappers in Washington State killed 1,700 “nuisance” beavers, nearly 20 times more than were relocated alive. In neighboring Oregon, the herbivorous rodents are classified as predators, logic and biology notwithstanding. California considers them a “detrimental species.” Last year alone, the U.S. Department of Agriculture eliminated more than 23,000 conflict-causing beavers nationwide.

Running countercurrent to this carnage is another trend: the rise of the beaver believer. Across North America, many scientists and land managers are discovering that, far from being forces of destruction, beavers can serve as agents of water conservation, habitat creation, and stream restoration. In Maryland, ecologists are promoting beaver-built wetlands to filter out agricultural pollutants and improve water quality in the Chesapeake Bay. In North Carolina, biologists are building beaverlike dams to enhance wet meadows for endangered butterflies. In England, conservationists have reintroduced the Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber) in hopes that their pond complexes will attenuate destructive floods . And in Washington, where a century of habitat loss has devastated salmon, the Tulalip Tribes are strategically dispatching beavers to support the fish so integral to their history and culture.

Back at the truck, I recount my exchange with the beaver-abhorring walker. Alves laughs. She has heard such slander before, and has a rebuttal at the ready.

“I would have asked him if he likes fresh water and salmon.”

That beavers benefit salmon is, in some quarters, a provocative claim. Many biologists historically regarded beaver dams as stream-choking barriers to fish passage. In the 1970s, Washington, Oregon, and California even passed laws mandating the removal of in-stream wood, beaver dams included. More recently, a 2009 proposal funded by the Atlantic Salmon Conservation Foundation suggested eradicating beavers from 10 river systems on Prince Edward Island and employing trappers to enforce “beaver-free zones” in others.