Well now it’s not that Texas can’t learn about beavers, it apparently just takes them a little longer than most. Here’s a case in point.
Collin County developer uses ‘Beaver Deceiver’ on problematic dam
FAIRVIEW – A Collin County developer has found a different way to solve a beaver problem where he’s building that won’t cause any harm to the animals living there.
About 100 yards long, the beaver dam is next to a site where million dollar homes will be built in Fairview and has likely been hidden on the land for years. Now, the algae-filled pond created by the dam poses a problem to future homeowners.
“Typically what other people do is they hire a trapper and set traps and catch the beavers and relocate them or kill them,” said Bonnie Bradshaw, of 911 Wildlife. “And that’s not either humane or effective.”
So far, so good. Everything looks promising until – well see for yourself.
That’s right. The beaver deceiver is draining the pond so the beavers will be forced to leave!
“If we just came in and destroyed the dam and the beavers moved downstream, another family would come back and try to rebuild in the same area,” Reynolds said.
With the pond gone, the beavers will have no choice but to move on their own, preventing flooding, mosquitoes and the need for traps.
Beaver make-leavers?
Now I’ve thought about this a great deal. 911 Wildlife isn’t silly enough to think flow devices scare beavers away. I wrote the owner Bonnie Bradshaw last year and made sure she knew about Sherri’s book and Mike’s DVD. When they helped the students install that one in Grand Prairie they seemed to know what they were doing.
“The way it works is, they put a pipe on the front of it, and they put a cage on the front of it to trap the debris, and the water flows right down the middle of it, but it keeps the dam intact,” explained sixth grade science teacher Lenora Tygart.
So this has to be the fault of the reporter (s), who misunderstood every word that came out of her mouth. Because of course the point of this would be to make beavers LEAVE. Who on earth is crazy enough to spend money to make them stay? But if you look closely even the graph shows that they aren’t trying to “drain the pond”. Remember the height where it bends over the dam determines the height of the pond.
Oh, and who uses that old box filter anyway? That would be straight from Laura Simon’s paper. In fact that graphic is directly lifted 
from it. Interestingly the paper fails to mention how beaver deceivers force the animals to depart.
So KHOU really thinks its a good idea to drain ponds and cut down trees to keep beavers away? Seems a little bit extreme. Don’t you need water for those golf courses? And what are all those cattle going to drink?
It’s a good thing Texas never had any droughts or anything.
So now that we’re talking about climate change, this picture of the fire currently burning its way towards Yosemite horrified me this morning and I had to share.
