The Beaver Coalition in Oregon has just released a fantastic guidebook on using and installing pond levelers and culvert fences. This is an clearly laid out step-by-step guide to pass along to interested landowners and slightly less interested public works directors.
It is an honor to present the best management practices (BMPs) for coexisting with beavers using flow devices. This document is intended to empower the landowners, organizations, municipalities, and wildlife professionals who are interested in finding solutions to ongoing conflicts between human infrastructure and beaver habitat while still retaining the beavers and their benefits. If you would like to install a pond leveler or culvert protection system, use these standards to guide your planning, design, installation, monitoring, and maintenance. If you don’t have the capacity to implement these BMPs, there are an increasing number of trained professionals who can assist in your project. Drop us a line and we will help connect you to someone in your area.
The excellent and very hand on guide goes through how to manage specific sites and even describes what to do with very narrow channels or a second dams build after the first one that floods the flow device. I will put a permanent link on the website but you should go check it out and be appreciate all their hard work.
I particularly like their decision tree recommended how to handle a culvert problem where large fish passage might be an issue. Thanks Jason et al!
