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• Talk about the beavers.

Gene Dalton | The Roanoke Times

A beaver preens itself Tuesday on the bank of Toms Creek inside Heritage Community Park and Natural Area.

BLACKSBURG -- It took only two months for Virginia Tech wildlife expert Jim Parkhurst's prophesy to come true: New beavers have moved into a section of Toms Creek that flows through Heritage Community Park and Natural Area.

In January, Blacksburg Town Council unanimously ordered the eradication of a beaver pair that was ripping up flower gardens and felling shrubs and trees in Ruby Dove's back yard on Meadowbrook Drive.

Flooding from the beavers' dams in the park also threatened her property.

The council hired Parkhurst as a consultant and he laid out three options: Leave the beavers alone, erect barrier fences or eradicate the animals. Citing the extensive damage and budget and staffing concerns, council chose eradication.

But Parkhurst warned in January that the council hadn't seen the last of the toothy rodents. It was inevitable that new beavers would move into the park. It is located a short distance from the national forest and in the middle of the Toms Creek Basin, Blacksburg's most rural area, he said.

And they have arrived just in time to perhaps become an issue in the upcoming May election, when residents will choose three council members and a new mayor.

On Tuesday, Blacksburg Natural Heritage Foundation President Jim Fraser said he has seen the beaver dam and heard, but not seen, beavers in the creek.

He called for the town to devise a management plan for portions of the 169-acre park designated as natural areas, including federally protected wetlands near the creek.

Fraser said he couldn't speak for other members of the foundation. But for him, he said, the lack of a consistent plan for management of the park's natural areas is an election issue.

He pointed out that the town manages the park like a farm. And he added that much of the park could be planted with trees to provide food for beavers and to restore a more natural ecosystem there.

The Heritage Foundation is a successor organization to the Friends of the Brown Farm, a group that lobbied the council in the late 1990s to keep the park as a natural area.

The council later passed a compromise that designated some areas as natural but would allow development in other sections. But aside from an unfinished spur of the Huckleberry Trail and a plan to build a bridge over the creek, the council has funded little development there.

Most such proposals get close scrutiny from foundation members and elicit lengthy public comment sessions.

Many Heritage Foundation members are also involved in Citizens First, a political action committee that successfully backed the election of Councilmen Paul Lancaster, Ron Rordam and Don Langrehr in 2004.

The beavers have been an especially thorny issue for Langrehr, who is challenging Rordam for the mayor's chair. Langrehr recently referred to the eradication as "my political crisis" because a goodly number of his supporters are environmentalists.

Langrehr led several tours of the park this winter to show constituents the extent of the damage and to explain the reasons he voted for eradication in January.

On Tuesday, both Langrehr and Rordam, along with Councilman Tom Sherman, advocated creation of a consistent wildlife management plan.

Foundation members, some of whom are wildlife experts, have for years offered to help devise such a plan for Heritage Park, but have had little positive response, Fraser said.

A park user, Langrehr said Tuesday that he has also seen the beaver dam, which is in an isolated section of the park adjacent to wetlands.

"They couldn't have picked a better spot. It's like we gave them a permit," he said.

Langrehr said he planned to bring up the park's management today at a meeting of the town's Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, on which he serves.

But it's unlikely the council will officially take up the beaver issue before the election.

Town Manager Marc Verniel said Tuesday that staff will evaluate any threats the beavers might pose to neighboring properties.

If the new beavers "are not causing damage off-site, we'll probably just leave them alone," he said.

In the summer, Verniel said a special committee may be appointed to write a townwide wildlife management plan that will include beaver issues.

The recreation board is also considering a 40-year vision plan for the town's parks that will include Heritage Park.