This has been sitting on the shelf a few days waiting for JUST the right time to share it with you. I think the right time is now, and I’m so happy to be the bearer of good news.
Palouse landowner welcomes beavers, and their ecological wizardry, back to her land
Linda Jovanovich is no farmer. She had run a landscaping business for years in Pullman and then worked as an elementary school librarian. In a college geology course she’s become enamored with the natural world.
So, she started planting aspens, willows and other vegetation along the little no-name creek.
Two-and-a-half decades later that work has paid off. Her property is a wildlife oasis among rolling fields of wheat. Piles of tree limbs dot her land, providing shelter for rodents and birds, coyotes and raccoons.
So, when beavers showed up eight years ago, she had mixed emotions.
On one hand, she was thrilled. She knew streams slowed by beaver dams and lodges create better habitat for animals and insects, collect silt and store and cool water, among other things.
On the other, their ponds flooded her little creek and threatened to drown her beloved trees.
So of course Linda called the Lands Council which is something you can do if you live in Spokane, and they live trapped and relocated the beavers. Okay that works once or twice. But the when she called them back a few years later they had different ideas.
This time around, the Lands Council tried a different approach.
“The first question is always, can we keep the beaver here,” Bachman said. “Because usually when you find a place where you have beaver you have beaver there because it’s good beaver habitat.”
So, on Nov. 5, Bachman drove to Jovanovich’s home and started breaking small holes in the beavers’ dam. These breaches, over the course of an hour, dropped the water level about a foot. Then he built a cage out of chicken wire with the help of Ben Goldfarb, a journalist, Lands Council board member and the author of “Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter.”
Now THAT I’d pay to see. Ben in waders! I sure hope they didn’t build that cage out of chicken wire though, because it will never survive being in the water for any amount of time.
From the chicken wire cage, Bachman ran two 4-inch pipes, placed two cinder blocks at the bottom of the cage, dropped the entire thing into the pond and put the pipes through the beaver dam.
Voila, water rushed from the pipes.
In theory, the pipes will siphon enough water through the dam to keep the pond-level manageable. At the same time, the pond won’t drain completely, keeping the entrances to the beaver lodge submerged and the beavers defended from predators.
Well yes, that’s how it works. And if you do it right and DON’T USE CHICKENWIRE it can last for a decade like it did in Martinez. Hurray! Now just watch the wildlife that moves in, Linda!
Although the Lands Council has been working with beavers for a decade, using these types of tools, which are broadly known as flow-mitigation devices, is a new trick and reflects a shifting attitude toward coexistence in Washington.
Although Washington has a history of beaver tolerance, coexistence has relied mostly on keeping beavers and humans apart.
That’s partly because since 2019, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has run a pilot beaver relocation project. Under the pilot, WDFW issues beaver relocation permits. The agency urges landowners to “take measures to tolerate or mitigate beaver activity whenever possible” before they move the creatures.
Well it’s Washington, so good ideas about beavers are nothing new. I’m glad they are getting down to the brass tacks of coexistence though. Because its the right way for things to be going better for everyone involved.
Jovanovich’s little slice of creek cuts its way through the Palouse’s rich and deep topsoil, the deposited effluent of the unimaginable Missoula Floods. While some of the most fertile soil in the world, it’s prone to erosion. In an intact ecosystem, trees and other plants grow alongside these streams, helping anchor the soil.
Beavers offer another complementary solution.
Sediment from their dams will, over time, fill in incised creeks, not to mention trap water. This in turn raises the water table, promotes growth along the stream banks and increases fish habitat, said Bachman.
While small, Jovanovich’s 7-acre experiment shows a possible future for stream restoration throughout Eastern Washington and North Idaho.
And, if nothing else, it provides her yet another chance to commune with the natural world.
“I’ve always wanted to attract birds and wildlife,” she said, adding “We just should find a better way to live with them.”
The reporter was clearly a little bit Ben-fatuated because he goes on to write about Lars beaver experiments and delights when Ben steps in the water to deep for his waders. But excellent. We need all kind of reasons to live with beavers. And there certainly are many to add to the list.
