Yesterday was filled with bad beaver news and so depressing. Time for some Christmas cheer again. This time from Seguin township in Canada, across Lake Huraon from Michigan.
Seguin property owners wants beaver pond; township worried about road
SEGUIN TWP. – As the township pulls apart a beaver dam, the property owner across the way is hoping more beavers will move in and give her back the pond she used to have. The township said it’s not trying to destroy the dam, it’s simply trying to maintain the depth of the pond to protect the road they are doing reconstruction work on.
In the summer of 2015 a beaver dam on Clear Lake Road broke for a second time in less than a year, flooding a section of road further down where a creek flows under the road and, still today, the water level in the pond that sits partially on Diane Dow’s property is below what it used to be. The blame for that, said Dow, sits squarely on the shoulders of the township, which had trapped the adults leaving none to maintain their dam.
And now, she said, the township is pulling apart the beaver dam across the road and calling her for permission to go on her land to break the dam there. She’s having none of it. She wants the pond to return to what it was when she built her home there, she wants the moose, bear, and otters; she certainly doesn’t want to see the beavers facing starvation, freezing temperatures and predation if the water level drops and their homes become exposed.
“There has never been an issue with this road … until they started trapping the beavers,” she said.
Dow reached out to Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary to help with the situation. Aspen’s managing director Howard Smith said breaking a beaver dam at this time of year is “cruel …. now they are all set up for winter.”
Not only that, beaver ponds create habitat for many other animals including birds and amphibians. He recommends Seguin use a pipe through the dam to control water depth.
How much do you LOVE Diane Dow? We’re pretty fond of her ourselves. Imagine wanting to protect a beaver pond when your city wants it gone. It takes a special kind of woman and a bunch of her friends to do that, I can tell you!
Now what’s this ‘pipe’ that Howard guy is talking about? What a crazy idea. Do they even work?
Mitigating infrastructure loss from beaver flooding: A cost–benefit analysis
Glynnis A. Hood, Varghese Manaloor & Brendan Dzioba
Abstract
We installed 12 pond levelers to counter flooding by beavers and developed a cost–benefit analysis for these sites in Alberta, Canada. We also documented beaver management approaches throughout Alberta. Over 3 years, one site required regular maintenance until we designed a modified pond leveler; another required minor modifications. Others required almost no maintenance. Based on a “willingness-to-pay” (WTP) of $0 and discount rate of 3%, installing pond levelers resulted in a present value net benefit of $81,519 over 3 years and $179,440 over 7 years. Scenarios incorporating discount rates of 3% and 7%, horizons of either 3 or 7 years, and varying WTPs resulted in significant net benefits. Provincially, municipalities employed up to seven methods to control beavers: most commonly lethal control and dam removal. Total annual costs provided by 48 municipalities and 4 provincial parks districts were $3,139,223; however, cost-accounting was sometimes incomplete, which makes this a conservative estimate
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