Beaver champion and Worth A Dam good friend, Adrien Nelson of Fur-bearer defenders, picked up the gauntlet to help the smart crew from LUSH cosmetics install a beaver deceiver and pond leveler combination in Mission Canada (not far from Vancouver). There is a lovely blog piece written about their effort here.
In order to install the beaver deceiver, we first had to dismantle the existing beaver dam. We donned hip waders, braved near-freezing water and wielded rakes to pull debris from the dam. This was a surprisingly difficult task- the dam was incredibly solid! It wasn’t just constructed of logs and branches, but was packed tightly with loads of dirt, leaves and rocks too. Beavers are industrious and use whatever materials are available to build their dams. Interesting examples are partial pallets and road signs!
You don’t need to convince us! Once we found golf clubs and a false leg in our beaver dam. Great to see people learning about solutions, and spreading the beaver gospel around the north. It’s always surprising how ‘surprised’ folks are by the density of a beaver dam. How would a loosley packed collection of mud and sticks hold back water?
While we were getting dirty dismantling the beaver dam, the other half of our team built the flow device on dry land. We all worked together in order to maneuver the device into the water when it was completed. The pond water was too deep to venture in with our hip waders, but Adrian bravely slipped into his wetsuit and went for a frigid swim to place the pipe and its mesh guard several meters into the pond. Once we had put the deceiver and pond leveler into place (and Adrian had regained feeling in his limbs!), we placed the displaced dam material against the deceiver. The beavers would likely return that evening to find their dam looking a little different than they’d left it, but they wouldn’t waste any time getting to work and rebuilding their dam against the deceiver.
Great work by some great folks! If you want to support their efforts you can donate to Fur-bearer Defenders here or check out Lush Cosmetics here. They’re animal-testing free, green packaged, and very popular! Plus they help beavers, which is all we really need to know.
At the end of the day, we had accomplished quite a feat: we’d provided a long-term, effective solution so that resident beavers and the property owner can happily coexist, and we’d removed the need for the beavers to be trapped and killed. Hopefully this solution will serve as a testament that municipal beaver trapping is not necessary, and that with a little compassion it’s possible to harmonize with these fantastic animals.
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Now a little gossip and some blurry photos of our own beloved beavers! Three seen this morning crossing a beautifully tight secondary dam that was topped with fresh cut beaver-chewed willow. Some mudding and work at the bank hole. And then our littlest beaver came back over, Jr was just about in time for his first birthday. He stopped at the dam trying to look officious, moving branches from this way to that, then he saw the tasty new cuts woven into the dam and thought they looked more like dinner than building material. He tugged the 8 foot branch OFF the dam and swam away with it into the bank hole, working hard to get it inside the den. Kids!
