It’s always feast or famine around here at beaver central. A trickle of news stories thru the week and then a DUMP of beaver news all at once. Maybe it’s something about Friday being less important than the other news days, but buckle up because we have lots to talk about.
The first is the long-awaited story from Charlotte North Carolina, and I dare say the most progressive look at beaver in that part of the South since I’ve been on the beaver-beat. Wen the article appeared it aired with a very special photo which I of course captured for your viewing pleasure before I made sure it was corrected.
On a quiet fall night on the Catawba River, a beaver dam stopped a potential disaster. The dam was all that stood between a sewage leak and the river that supplies much of Charlotte’s drinking water.
“A beaver dam strategically located contained the spill,” the utilities report stated. Beavers were the heroes on this day, and can benefit local ecosystems, but they are not always so helpful.
Hmmm fine beginning and intriguing angle linking it to the sewage spill. Now lets get to some more discussion of this issue.
Sharon Brown, a biologist from Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife, a national beaver advocacy group, said that once a colony of beavers is removed, a new colony typically will move in sometime in the near future.
Some towns, like Martinez, Calif., near the San Francisco Bay area, have petitioned local governments to install flow devices to curb beavers’ negative effects. These devices steal water away from the beavers, lessening their impact. But it allows the beavers to still keep their dam.
“(The city council) was kicking and screaming” because they initially didn’t want to pay, said Heidi Perryman, who runs a beaver blog in Martinez.
Christopher Newport University, in Newport, Va., released a study comparing the costs of keep or removing beavers. The study looked at 14 dam sites, and compared the costs before and after flow devices were installed. It found that before the devices, it costs around $300,000 to remove beavers and to repair the surrounding areas. Often a new colony moved right back in.
The price over the same period of time with the devices was around $44,000 because the beavers’ damage is permanently controlled. “People don’t realize the benefits of beavers are hidden,” Brown said.
Beaver dams filter water, which helps contain urban runoff and water pollution from spreading downstream. They also create new ecosystems, as animals come to the slower water around the dam. Beaver removal can destroy these habitats.
In Martinez, the community ended up saving their town’s beavers, even creating a yearly festival to celebrate the beavers’ continued survival.
“There has been a strong push to coexist,” Brown said.
Ta daa! Positive beaver quotes from North Carolina! And a powerful 1-2 punch from Sharon and myself – why and how to live with beavers, my favorite topics. Of course Sharon gets extra respect for being a ‘biologist’ and Worth A Dam doesn’t even get a MENTION, but it’s okay, I’ll make sure we’re a household word eventually. Hrmph.
MENDON – Officials are looking into installing a beaver flow device in the Mendon Town Forest, where beavers are causing flooding. According to Community Preservation Committee and Land Use Committee Chairperson Anne Mazar, a beaver dam located in the Town Forest is causing flooding in the area. She and Bill Dakai, volunteer Mendon Town Forest Land Steward, showed the dam to Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions, who said a beaver flow device could be installed there to solve the problem.
“A flow device lets the beavers live at the pond and build their dam, but the device lets water flow under the dam undetected by the beavers,” said Mazar.
Over the years, Callahan has successfully installed hundreds of the devices around the country, including one in Mendon at Inman Pond that Mazar said “works well.”
It is a long-term cost-effective and humane way to control beaver flooding,” she said. “Trapping and dam breaching is costly and not permanent.”Many towns, she said, spend thousands on culvert repairs because of damage from beaver flooding. Mazar said the device costs about $2,000 to $3,000.
If the site is right for the flow devices, towns can save time and money,” said Mazar.
If the name Mazar sounds vaguely familiar, it should because it was just a month ago we wrote about her when the town agreed to kill beavers in Lake Nipmuc. As you’ll remember, those conditions weren’t ‘suitable’ for a flow device and the beavers were killed. Of course I’m unhappy with that explanation, but Mike thinks like a businessman and never wants to stake his reputation on a situation that doesn’t look favorable – he needs that city to maintain faith in him down the line so they hire him again and save some other beavers.
Which makes sense, I guess.
In the meantime, we’re happy these beavers in the forest get saved, and wish Mike and Anne all the luck in the world. And I must remind everyone that the conditions weren’t exactly favorable in Martinez either, and look how we turned out!
Now you’ve been very good so I’m saving the best for last. I’ll spare you the silly article about the golf course being bewildered how a ‘baby beaver just showed up there lost one morning’ because I assume that EVERY READER of this website knows why orphans appear at golf courses. You definitely want to make this one ‘full screen’.
