Busy beavers create salmon habitat in Kitsap

Beavers are busy throughout the soggy gully. Tidy stacks of gnawed sticks divert the flow of water in places, creating sprawling ponds. The stream banks are littered with fallen trees, and the trunks of still-standing cedars have been chewed nearly in half.

“We get tons of calls from people saying there’s a beaver dam and they’re concerned about the fish,” state Department of Fish and Wildlife habitat biologist Brittany Gordon said.

While dams can, in some instances, impede fish, Gordon said the rodents do more to help than hinder salmon.

And hey, you know those beavers don’t cost our taxpayers any money. So that’s a plus.

Structures engineered by beavers create complex habitat for fish and other wildlife by slowing water flow, funneling water into deep pools and fast-moving side channels, and connecting isolated wetlands. Such diverse habitat is especially critical for juvenile coho salmon, which will spend a year in freshwater before migrating into the ocean.

“They need places to hide, places to eat and places to get big,” Gordon said. “they need ponds and slower-moving areas.”

When there’s enough water in creeks for salmon to spawn, the returning fish are adept at getting over and around beaver dams, as they have for time immemorial. A series of small dams can make it easier for salmon to splash upstream by holding standing water.

Time immemorial. Read that. Will you just READ THAT. It’s on the friggin news.

Gordon said dams do sometimes impede fish during very dry periods and when they are built up against human infrastructure like culverts. Even when streams are low, it’s a bad idea to bust up dams, Suquamish Tribe biologist Jon Oleyar said.

Notching a dam during spawning season can send a sudden “pulse” of water downstream, giving salmon a false signal that it’s time to move upstream. Water levels will drop above the busted dam, potentially stranding fish.

Listen up Michigan and Wisconsin and DFO’s in British Columbia. We’re talking to you. Stop messing with beaver dams. Just stop it.

Gordon said the Department of Fish and Wildlife advocates keeping dams in place whenever possible.

“The habitat benefits that dams provide outweigh any temporary barriers,” she said.

Can we carve that in stone somewhere? Or maybe make it into a tattoo to put on the foreheads of every one everywhere? The article does go out to outline specific instance where a permit is given to notch a beaver dam in some rare conditions. But mostly it says DON’T DO IT.

Okay, I’m going to swear now. Brace yourselves. The situation just demands it. Ready?

Guess who decided pick up Ben Goldfarb’s biographic article? The would be the fucking Atlantic, Baby. Ohh yeah.