Gosh this NEVER happens. Some inexplicable and uncanny beavers are blocking a culvert in Salem and threatening traffic. Because this kind of behavior is extremely rare and no one EVER has invented a proven solution for it in the past, the authorities need a special permit so they can kill these animals right away, even though trapping season is over. Do you think they’ll be able to get one in time? I’m on pins and needles.
Salem leaders have hired a trapper to remove beavers from a stretch of Rattlesnake Ledge Road that nearly flooded last week after the animals blocked a pair of drainage culverts that run underneath the street. It’s a recurring problem that officials say creates a safety hazard for motorists and leaves the town liable if there’s an accident.
First Selectman Kevin Lyden said the town is working with the state Department of Environmental Protection on the effort, and a long-term solution could be in place soon to keep the animals away permanently. Read more: Beaver dams create potential road flooding hazard in Salem
You’ll be happy to know that Department of Environmental Protection took it upon themselves to protect Salem’s culverts from its beavers and allowed the family to be exterminated. I’m told the selected selectman assures us that even though this is a temporary solution he will be planning a permanent solution for NEXT TIME. I can’t wait.
Okay, I’ve only written about this about this 438 times, in counties from Georgia to Saskatchewan, but maybe its time for an easy visual syllogism instead:
If this
Then this
Still too esoteric and subtle? Just watch the movie version:
Uh-oh. Looks like we broke the dam-cam. I can’t help it I keep telling people how enormously cool it is, especially between 8:30 and 9:30 in the morning, and I guess it just got a little more bandwidth than it could handle. (Well, who hasn’t these days? ) The USFS worker who turned me onto it connected me with the techno biologist fisheries ranger who’s keeping track of it. He’s been kind enough to tell us what it would entail to operate our own and we swapped stories of what a great guy Bob Armstrong is. I just wrote him in a panic asking where my beaver pictures were and he said he’s on his way out to fix it now. Whew, we’re might get beavers back for the long holiday weekend!
Beaver people are good people!
So this should mean I offer a pithy and well-crafted post undistracted by grainy whiskered beaver images as they settle in for their morning chew and groom. Hmm. Well this morning offers another beaver piece from the Berkshire Eagle, talking about beavers flooding and chewing trees at a place called Greylock. The remarkable part of the article is that it describes a beaver deceiver fairly well,
A beaver deceiver works three ways with the first being the length of the fence making it difficult to dam the whole waterway. Second, the shape of the fence forces the beavers to dam away from the culvert, which is against their nature and third, forces the beavers to dam along the fence. This means that as the beavers dam away from the opening of the stream into the body of water gets further away, the sound of flowing water diminishes. The sound of flowing water triggers the beaver’s natural instinct to dam. If the sides of the fence are at least 12 feet long, beavers will typically not even bother to dam there. Cesan said it may be time to consider using beaver deceivers at the Glen.
You can’t tell from the article who he’s quoting about the way it works but the language is almost word for word from Mike’s DVD, except for the term ‘beaver deceiver’, which is obviously Skip Lisle’s term. See for yourself:
Maybe there’s only one way to explain a beaver deceiver? And everyone does it the same? Or maybe someone from the Berkshire Eagle educated themselves? Someone in Massachusetts has certainly been beaver management trained! And how rare is it to see an article from the commonwealth without a single reference to the inconvenient trapping laws?
The one thing the article DOESN’T do is mention the obvious fact that regardless of how many beaver deceivers you install, it’s not going to protect your trees, which should be wrapped with wire or painted with sand. Oh well, you gave a nudge for beaver mercy, let us know when you’re ready to finish the race!
You know how some restaurants constantly refill your pepsi or lemonade, or you watch an old movie and clown after clown gets out of the tiny car? Well that’s how beaver-problem-in-the-news stories are. Whenever I scratch my head about what to write about in the morning, I can always find five new regions where beavers are mysteriously flooding roads, city staff is valiantly ripping up dams only to be completely surprised that the beavers are rebuilding anyway, and irritable men are talking about trapping, bemoaning the dwindling price of fur. The articles usually contain more than one alarming sounding threat, a statement about population boom without any corresponding proof, at least one blatant falsehood, and a truly rankling pun.
Go ahead. See for your self. Google the terms Beaver+Flooding+Trapping and see what you get in news stories.
LEWISTON — Maurice Morin watched Tuesday as Lewiston Public Works crews cleaned out a culvert on the Stetson Road — again. Beavers did what beavers do, built a dam. But their dam has trapped water and at times flooded the road. Despite strong hints for them to leave, like running a telephone pole through their dam, the beavers have stayed and kept rebuilding. During heavy rains, the plugged culvert has flooded the road, forcing the city to close it.
The beavers have to go, said Morin, who lives on the Stetson Road.
Did you catch that? Public Works played “storming the castle” and ran the dam through with a telephone pole like a battering ram. That must have taken some planning and a number of employees. Must have been a lot of fun. I bet it worked really, really well.
Crews have repeatedly come out “with a boat, a backhoe, trucks, foremen, workmen. Every time these people open it up, it’s costing us a lot of money. It’s ridiculous. The state should do something to let us take the beavers out,” Morin said. “A beaver is just a big rat with a flat tail.”
Boat party at Lewiston Public Works and everyone’s invited! Your right Mr. Morin, its a great waste of public funds. I know something better they could do than rip stuff out. And it doesn’t involve trapping. True it’s probaby not as much fun as boats and backhoes but it actually works and will be a Long-term solution to your culvert problem. Trapping would need to be repeated every year.Interesting comment about beavers being rats. You sound like a complex, thoughtful, nature-appreciating property owner. Come to think of it are you sure your name is spelled correctly? I think its possible the paper got a vowel wrong. (Guess which one?)
Jon Elie, operations manager for Lewiston Public Works highway division, said the culvert is cleared for now, but the beaver problem isn’t settled. Elie estimates the city has spent $3,000 to $4,000 in the last three years at the same location trying to clear dams out of the culvert. This year alone crews have been to the site three times. This week “we tried to do the best job we could. Winter’s coming,” Elie said.
Remember that scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid where they are being pursued by a bunch of experts and finally realizing what an extraordinary team of lawmen has been pulled together to take them down and Paul Newman says, agreeably,
“If they’d just pay me all the money they’re spending to make me stop robbing them, I’d stop robbing them!”
3500 dollars would more than pay for a beaver deceiver. You could put Skip up at a nice hotel and buy him breakfast. You could call the papers and the evening news and use the whole event to bring Lewiston a little humane publicity. Maybe involve some school children to come out and monitor the beaver pond and the changes that occur before winter. You could become a trend setter and send your crew out to Leeds to explain how it all works.
Several years ago the city put in a “beaver deceiver,” a series of pipes that stick out of the culvert. The goal is to confuse the beavers and discourage them from rebuilding. The deceiver often takes water in without the trickling noise. The sound of water furthers the beaver’s drive; when they hear water, they seem to react with “here’s where I’ve got to plug it up,’” Elie said. The deceiver worked for a while, but the beavers got smart and damned the culvert from the other side. “They went through the outlet of the pipe and clogged it,” Elie said. This week crews took out the beaver deceiver, cleaned it out, put it back in and installed a grate on the other side of the culvert. But the grate is not ideal. Vegetation clogs up the grate quite fast, Elie said. “It’s a difficult thing to maintain.” After all the work, “there still is a family of beavers living there,” probably five or six, Elie said.
Thank goodness the responsible journalists at the Sun Journal took the time to photograph the “series of pipes”. Hold on while I clean off the keyboard. That was a coffee spitter. Let’s be clear. This is a BEAVER DECEIVER in much the same way that when I stick up my thumb, point my index finger and say ‘bang’ my hands is a GUN. This is more like a “crazy-animal- lover deceiver” so that the city can say it tried humane methods and that didn’t work. A beaver deceiver is trapezoidal fencing installed at a culvert. It works by allowing the beavers to dam but forcing them to move farther and farther away from the water source. I was actually starting to get worried until I saw this photo, and realized they had never, ever, even for the smallest fraction of a moment tried to solve this problem humanely. I can’t believe that your ‘T pipe invention” actually worked on and off for three years. Nice job boys. Sometimes it takes actual research or a phone call to solve problems. I hear using (Teh) Google can help too.
I can’t imagine what all this ripping and ramming is doing to the water quality. Well no matter. You can always blame it on the beavers. I can see that this article is ass-covering in every way. The poor beleagered town of Lewiston has tried to save the beavers by using humane methods. They have applied countless man hours and heavy equipment. There’s a soggy, defenseless and fairly angry property owner involved complaining to the media. What else can they do? The only solution is the final solution.
Okay Lewiston, before you kll the ‘rats’ and justify it as if you had no choice, read this pamphlet on actual beaver deceivers. Call Skip Lisle (802) 376-3324 and find out what went wrong. I promise you’ll get better press from doing this right than from crushing the beavers to death before winter sets in.
Brands and names have a strange way of shaping our language. “Aspirin” was once a brand name, owned and trademarked, and is now the general name for acetylsalicylic acid fromBayer to Bufferin. Hoover, Biro, Sellotape: all brand names that became the generic term. It’s a compliment of sorts, for your invention to become the ubiquitous name for all copies, but no inventor is happy about it at first.
I mention this because there has always been much confusion about the names of flow devices. Even the much publicized contraption in Alhambra Creek has been repeatedly misnamed in print and conversation. Recent confusion is evident in this article about the Oshawa beavers. Certainly a beaver colony won’t be saved by a name, but its good for readers of this blog (the most informed beaver watchers in the known universe) to know what’s what. This is confusing business, and I’m still learning, so consider this a work in progress.
A Flow Device is the generic term. It can apply to all installations designed to humanely block beavers from a destructive water activity. The thing in Alhambra Creek is a Flow Device, in the same way that your Honda is an Automobile, or your Labrador is a Dog. Sometimes the terms “beaver deceiver” or “beaver baffler” are also used generically, meaning any effort to humanely trick a beaver. This is incorrect and sometimes confusing, so here’s a primer:
The Beaver Deceiver is a trapazoidal fence built around a culvert to prevent beavers from blocking the culvert. It was invented by Skip Lisle in his work with the Penobscot Nation in Maine. His name has become very linked to the invention, and since he installed Martinez Flow Device it is sometimes mistakenly called a Beaver Deceiver. It isn’t one. Our problem was dam height not culvert blocking.
This ground-breaking device was a production of Clemson University in South Carolina. It involved a perforated pipe through the dam and a baffled intake. It is less used today because of its rigid, expensive construction, but it was hugely important in demonstrating that flow devices could work to manage beaver behavior.
This is the flow device in Alhambra Creek designed by Skip Lisle of Beaver Deceivers International. It involves a double walled flexible pipe which goes over the dam. The inlet of the pipe is enclosed with a roundfence called a “filter” which prevents the beavers from feeling suction and plugging the pipe. The outflow is downstream of the dam.
This is the flow device trademarked by Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions. It uses a single walled pipe which passes through a notch in the dam. The intake is enclosed by a roundfence with a domed top to block the pipe. The outflow may also be blocked with fencing.
The Beaver Baffler has been called a modern version of the Beaver Stop developed by Neil Thurber in Canada. The adaptions of the Baffler by Brian Graph of Dodgeville NY have been successfully used to prevent beavers from building in culverts. However, the trapezoidal fencing is generally thought to be more successful at preventing daming.
This combines the techniques of the culvert fencing with the flexibility of the pipe to encourage beavers to dam away from the culvert. It has tested at 99% effective.
A final word on the work of Michael LeClair, who developed many of these techniques with his original work in Gatineau park in Ontario. His work became the foundation of the pond levelers used throughout the world. His devices have been called “limiters” and are far more influential than they ever get credit for.
Fans of the Martinez Beavers will understand more intimately than most that the survival of our beavers ultimately depended on just one thing. Sure public outcry made a difference, and fear of political ruin quivered the hearts of at least two on the council, but if the dam had stayed at its original height and continued to pose a flooding threat, they would have been soundly dispatched. (Sent in a pickup truck to Plumas county if the god’s were kind or off to a glue factory somewhere if they were not.)
What fundamentally allowed the beavers to remain with us was the flow device, installed by Skip Lisle and often mistakenly called a “beaver deceiver”. (It’s actually a “Castor Master”.) This allowed for the water height to be lowered in such a way that the movement is disguised from the beavers. They don’t feel the suction and don’t associate the outflow with their dam, so they tolerate the water loss. Skip invented the beaver deceiver during his work with the Penobscot Nation. He went on to develop his ideas for the flow device and round fence over time. Skip is committed to showing the world that flow devices work. He traveled to Lithuania this summer to talk at the conference there, and he is headed for Oregon next week to give a four hour teaching at the State of the Beaver Conference.
Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions trained with Skip and eventually developed his own full time business around beaver management. His vision of the best use of management skills included a teaching DVD that would allow property owners, cities and transit workers to cheaply implement tools that could manage problematic beaver behavior. He is well aware that allowing this keystone species to remain takes care of so many others, but Mike is a pragmatic beaver defender who helps businesses focus on the bottom line. Installing a successful flow device, he argues, can manage the problem now and in the future. Hiring a trapper is a temporary solution that will get more expensive over time.
Mike was awarded a grant from the AWI last year to make the DVD, and has been working towards its release. Expect it in the Spring of 2010. Recently he approached me asking to pay to include three minutes of my beaver footage in the production. Since Mike’s smart website was the first place I turned with beaver questions LO these many moons ago, and we became friends over the ensuing years, I can’t think of anything more “full circle” than using that footage to help him and help beavers around the country for years to come. Whatever financial agreement we figure out will go to Worth A Dam.
In the mean time, I am helping him spread the word about the upcoming project with an announcement postcard sent to beaver supporters and interested media. You might recognize my favorite photo from Bob Armstrong of the Mendenhall Glacier Beavers. (He gave his blessing on the prospect, and arranged for Mike to come do a beaver management plan in the state park there.) The idea is to follow up with a second announcement once the project is released. I’m hopeful that by helping more people learn that there are reasonable ways to manage beaver behavior, and inexpensive tools for learning about them, we can significantly impact the well-being of beavers all around the country.
In the mean time, our wikipedia friend is supposed to be honing a “flow device” entry this weekend. It’s hard to remember so long ago, but in 2007 I definitely had to hunt to find out about options. Remember how many people talked about the Clemson Pond Leveler at the meeting? Someone from Lafayette even donated the funds for one. That was one tool that had been published and talked about, but the technology had already come a long way since then. Mike was the one who explained that to me. Let’s hope “flow device” becomes a household name – at least as common as “snare”.
