It’s been a long week of beaver wankery, so you deserve a friday report that will fill your weekend with optimism and hope. We’re in luck! Let’s start with this excellent bit of news about the Mendon Conservation district deciding to hire Beaver Solutions to control flooding on their property! Apparently, I knew Mike got the job hours before he did.( I wrote back really? just hours?)
Mazar said on Wednesday that the funds would be used to hire a firm, Beaver Solutions, to create a bypass for water flow.“They put a pipe under the dam, so water can pass through,” she said. “The pipe is long enough that the beavers don’t detect a leak.”
Since the beavers don’t detect the leak, Mazar said, they don’t attempt to block the pipe. Mazar said this solution was chosen because the other methods of controlling beaver activity are not especially successful.
“When dams are built, people often trap and kill the beavers, but they just come back,” she said. “Also, sometimes when the dam is pulled apart, it brings the water level too low.
Nice! And all the wildlife that depends on that pond will thank you! Good work! I’d wish Mike good luck installing the flow device, but he really doesn’t need it.
(Or a crane.)
Then a lovely account from an Alaskan fisherman about rescuing a dispersing beaver from the road and releasing him safely in water. You’ll want to read this nice account yourself, and you can find the only paragraph I dislike, but the rest is fabulous!
Last spring, while driving between Paxson and Maclaren on the Denali Highway, we came upon a medium-size beaver in the middle of the road near the top of the Maclaren Summit. The snow berms were at least four feet high on the sides of the road and there was no water for miles. What in the world was a beaver doing way up there?
Spring is the time of year when young beaver, usually 2-year-olds, leave the family house to make their way in the world. Beaver lodges are home to the family group. In the Interior of Alaska, this group usually consists of six to eight individuals. There are the breeding adults, their young from the previous year and the new young. The spring kits are born in early May after a gestation period of about three and a half months. The house gets crowded with the new additions, so off go the teenagers to make their own way in the world.
There was only one thing to do if he was to have a chance at survival — take him to water. I threw my coat over him and he obligingly put his head in a sleeve. With him thus immobilized, I zipped the coat, picked him up and put him in the Subaru. That seemed like a good way to transport him down to the Maclaren River and safety.
A beaver good samaritan! What a great image of this fisherman driving along with a beaver in his subaru! Thanks for the good cheer and the lovely imagery. (Of course there was once a beaver in my subaru, but it was mom and she was dying at the time, and she made a great passenger). Go read the whole thing yourself.
Now I’m off to the coast for some hard earned R & R! Happy Fall Friday!
