I honestly don’t no whether to be excited or dismayed by this news. I mean it’s kind of like you’ve been trying to teach your baby brother to use a fork when he eats his macaroni instead of eating with his fingers. And one day he suddenly pics up sand shovel and starts putting them in his mouth. It’s definitely an improvement and you are proud of him in a way. But he still has a long way to go before he can sit at the big kids table.

‘Beaver stops’ help road crews keep rodents at bay

Those pesky beavers seem to be intent on building dams wherever they see flowing water. While their dam-building prowess can be a boon for storing valuable water in the backcountry, it sometimes makes a mess when water backs up around Idaho roads and potentially floods them.

To combat this problem, Idaho Transportation Department maintenance worker Gary Cvecich went into the shop and welded channel iron and rebar into 4-foot by 3-foot panels that bolt together to force space between the culvert and a dam-building beaver. The “beaver stops” were put in place on Idaho 75 south of Stanley and Highway 21 at Banner Summit west of Stanley and Idaho 128 north of Ketchum.

“Every time you have a body of water and it has to narrow down and flow through a culvert, (beavers) can really jam that up quickly,” said Reed Hollinshead, information specialist for the Idaho Transportation Department. “It seems to be attractive to the beavers. It provides a good foundation for them to build a dam.”

Cvecich’s design is made to be removable and easy to clean.

Wow.

Just. Wow.

You welded that in your workshop all by yourself? Good job! Did you think about maybe looking to see what was already invented and has worked for two decades? Of course not, don’t be silly.

Do you think beavers might build against your little starter kit thingy? No of course not. Why would they? I’m sure you know best.

Hollinshead said the rebar fence allows water to continue to flow and creates space should a beaver get busy building dams next to the culvert.

So far, the system seems to be working.

“We’ve only had one incident where a beaver has tried to build after we installed these devices,” Cvecich said.

He said the devices could be adapted and used statewide and save road workers time and money.

Now maybe I’m wrong. But I imagine three beavers just sitting at the willow bar boasting about how fast they can block it. One beaver is like “Man I can plug that thing with two nights work”

And the other beaver bests him and says “I can do it all in ONE!”

Here’s what Skip Lisle, inventor of the thing you’re trying to avoid using has to say about them on Facebook.

Without a good pipe system it will just become a big beaver dam. If that’s the goal, terrific. Like thousands of prior flow devices, however, the danger is that the ultimate conclusion will be that “it” can’t be done and the beavers have to be killed. Then ground, or progress, will actually be lost.

But there is good news this morning anyway. A million years ago back I went to my first state of the beaver conference in 2011 and said, wow that was great! Why is it only every other year? There should be one on the East Coast in even years! So that people all over can learn about beavers.

An East Coast Beaver Conference is soon to be a reality! Co-hosted by the Beaver Institute and Ecotone Inc., we are inspired by and wish to complement the successful SURCP State of the Beaver Conference in OR. It is named BeaverCON 2020 and will be held near Baltimore, MD this March. This conference will be held every other year, alternating years with the west coast SURCP Conference. This means we can now have an international beaver

A Save-The-Date official notice will be released soon. However, readers of this blog can have a sneak preview now! ? Check out our website: www.BeaverCON.org. Enjoy! We already have a lot of great speakers lined up. I hope to see you in Baltimore in March!Beaver On at BeaverCON!

I’m pretty dam excited to be able to share this news, and I want EVERY single person here to think seriously about going. I want it to be so successful they run out of space. I can’t say I’m in love with the graphic but hey. all those smart minds gathered together under one roof is bound to produce some more artistic designs.

It’s been a long time coming, but it’s actually here. As Beaver Institute founder Mike Callahan aptly put it on the website