It was nice to see Martinez’ swarthy hero on the teevee this morning, doing what he loves best. Hurray for Bolton, Vermont which has solved a problem instead of trapping it! I can’t embed the video but if you click on the image you will go directly to watch the report. Say Hi to Skip when you do.
BOLTON, Vt. (WCAX) – The town of Bolton is working to battle beaver issues.
A public trail runs along Preston’s Pond in the Bolton Town Forest and beavers are building dams that occasionally flood the trail.
Crews Wednesday built and installed a Beaver Deceiver. The device controls the flow of the water so when it gets too high, it will drain while keeping the trail from flooding.
“For me, I’m just trying to keep live beavers in ecosystems. I’m trying to help people solve annoying problems — so, it’s the same everywhere in the world,” said Skip Lisle, who designed the device.
“It’s better to have a wetland here than a pasture, so that value you get, and you get to keep it without the trouble of beavers flooding your road or your culvert or whatever, by putting in a device like this,” said Rob Mullin, Bolton’s animal control officer.
The money for this project came from donations.
You bet it’s better to have a wetland than a pasture. Nice work Skip. It was better for Martinez to have a healthy lush creek filled with wildlife than it was to have a drainage ditch filled pollution too.
I was very interested to see this come across my feed this morning. Lots of beavers are terminated in these areas because of damage to weirs. It’s a nice video that explains much. Not sure it meets Mike and Skip’s exacting standards?
As an addendum allow me to note that as of yesterday morning I am officially no longer required to wear the Frankenstein boot of healing broken bones. They are officially mended and now I just have to work on the sleepy muscles,
Conservationists and beaver aficionados have reason to celebrate — the furry, water-loving animals are making a comeback in Blount County.
“Their population has been coming back and growing,” Julie Konkel, watershed coordinator for the Blount County Soil Conservation District told The Daily Times. “That means we have dams on a lot of the streams and creeks around the area.”
Those dams promote a healthy ecosystem and even help manage stormwater, but there’s one major drawback:
Beaver dams, no matter how natural, change water levels. In the wild, the influx of water creates wetlands and helps foster the local ecosystem. But in an urban area, rising water levels can threaten infrastructure, business and the livelihoods of the people nearby.
The solution is called a beaver pond leveler. It’s essentially a length of pipe that runs through the dam from one end to the other. A cage caps the intake to keep beavers or other debris from blocking the flow of water. The result is the beavers get to keep their dam, and more water is able to flow uninterrupted, reducing the potential flooding.
“It’s a way to coexist and enjoy the benefits,” Konkel said.
WOW!!! Go Julie! The illustration shows a Clemson pond leveler so I dearly hope the paper found that and she’s not using that illfated design, but wowwwwwwwwwwww Tennessee!
She already has installed multiple levelers around the county, although she admitted she’s not an expert on the subject. She feels there is a growing desire among the public to live alongside wildlife like beavers and appreciate them without getting rid of them.
“Along Pistol Creek, the greenway is right there,” Konkel said. “In a rain event, beaver dams can intensify flooding to the point that the greenway is not usable. And then there’s some instances where the beavers actually have about 11 dams, and they have created an entire backwater wetlands system over the years. As they’ve moved upstream, it’s really affected businesses.”
The alternative would be to kill the beavers or trap and relocate them to another area, but Konkel said removing them just leads to more beavers coming to take their place.
There are several kinds of levelers in existence, although the basic principle is the same for all. Konkel got plans from the Beaver Institute — a nonprofit organization that works to restore ecological balance between beavers and humans. The cost of installing one can range from under $1,000 to $2,000. Konkel has been able to construct some using grant money, while other times private citizens will pay for one on their property. She’s partnered with the city of Maryville’s grounds maintenance department to help with installations.
One of the benefits, she said, is that the levelers use common elements that are often involved in other projects. That meant Maryville has been able to save money by reusing extra materials from another effort on at least one occasion.
“I’ve done four or five now, and I have one pending,” Konkel said. “I keep getting requests. I’m really becoming more familiar with these systems and it seems like as people learn about them, there’s a rapidly growing demand.”
Centralian Owner of ‘Beaver Craftworks’ Installs Pond Leveler at Centralia College
By Isabel Vander Stoep / isabel@chronline.com
Luc Lamarche, of Beaver Craftworks, installs a pond leveler in China Creek along South King Street in Centralia as Centralia College Biology Professor Francis Bozzolo sets up a trail camera on Friday, April 21, 2023.
Poor academic performance aside, one Centralia College attendee has been causing grief for the school’s neighbors.
It’s a beaver. The creature has built its dam where China Creek runs through campus. With the rodent’s residence backing up water, businesses and homes in the area see an increased risk of flooding. However, trapping the beaver is a temporary solution, according to Luc Lamarche, of Centralia, owner of Beaver Craftworks.
“Some local beaver is going to notice, ‘Hey those digs are better than my digs. I’m going to move over there,’” Lamarche said. “It creates this black hole … (for the) landowner or the county or the public works department.”
Plus, Lamarche said, with Centralia in the flat, lush valley of the Chehalis River and its tributaries, “this whole area is beaver heaven.” Moving the creature simply makes it some other landowner’s problem.
Beavers are a keystone species, meaning they play an integral role in a healthy watershed. Lamarche’s business aims to create “beaver coexistence”: preventing flooding while letting the beaver stay in its chosen spot.
“Neighbors had voiced concerns like, ‘Well what’s up with this extra water?’ The college cares about that,” Lamarche said. “They’re excited to have a beaver, but they want to be good neighbors. And good fences make good neighbors, just like good boundaries make good relationships. … Anyone who’s married will understand that.”
This week, he installed one of a few coexistence contraptions at the Centralia College site. It’s called a pond leveler, which essentially runs a pipe through the dam so water continues to flow. The beaver will patch the holes from the pipe on its own. As the dam is built, more water will flow through the pipe.
The contraption also ensures the water level stays high enough for the beaver to swim down to their dam’s entryway, which protects them from predators.
Among other beaver coexistence devices Lamarche makes are culvert fences, as drainage pipes under roadways are destination getaways for beavers.
I just had to check and China creek is it in Washington state of course. I never heard of beaver craft before and didn’t know that Jakob was training people but that is wonderful news.
Living in Centralia since 2007, Lamarche studied as a civil engineer. Living in the rural area, he fell in love with nature.
“I started learning about beaver’s history and had this ‘Aha!’ moment,” he said. “(Beavers are) the animal kingdom’s civil engineer.”
He began learning more about North America’s largest rodent through classes and, in 2021, founded Beaver Craftworks.
While the devices are an “upfront investment,” he said, they can save time and money accrued by the permitting process and the execution of beaver trapping. The work is founded on decades worth of research preceding his business, Lamarche said.
Luc Lamarche, of Beaver Craftworks, installs a pond leveler in China Creek along South King Street in Centralia as Centralia College Biology Professor Francis Bozzolo sets up a trail camera on Friday, April 21, 2023.
Every beaver presents new challenges, he said. There are beavers in Canada with dams that stretch for more than 1 kilometer, which Lamarche referred to as “beaver New York City.” As much water is held back above ground by one beaver dam, it’s estimated that two to five times as much is stored underground.
This groundwater can be beneficial to plants and other species in an ecosystem. Beavers essentially create new wetland habitat, which can be critical for many other species’ survival.
Lamarche recommends anyone who’s interested to go online and research “beaver coexistence.” Check out more about the business and its work on Instagram at “beavercraftworks,” or the website https://www.beavercraft.works/.
Someday, cooperating with Beavers will be as common as planting tomatoes, without pesticides. And when that day comes, you know I’ll be there celebrating and I’ll invite you to celebrate too.
It was nice to see this photo of the newly installed ‘Castor Master’ in Martinez California in 2008. Mitch Avalon sent it along after our podcast interview. Of course no one knew what to call it back then or if Skip Lisle’s new-fangled invention would even work. But it definitely made an impression. PWA stands for Phillip Williams and Associates which is the fancy hydrology firm that the city hired to measure the creek and bemoan the amount of damage the beavers were going to do.
Now I can’t imagine why on earth PWA got paid for taking a photo of the flow device the city hired Skip Lisle to install and why they decided to do so at high tide exactly but I think I like Suzi’s picture better…
Crews Wednesday built and installed a Beaver Deceiver. The device controls the flow of the water so when it gets too high, it will drain while keeping the trail from flooding.
She already has installed multiple levelers around the county, although she admitted she’s not an expert on the subject. She feels there is a growing desire among the public to live alongside wildlife like beavers and appreciate them without getting rid of them.
