PROJECT MANAGEMENT
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Beaver Coexistence
As two species that both make significant modifications to waterways, beavers and human interests can be in conflict from time to time. Beavers build dams in streams to create ponds that provide shelter and protection, while storing water on the landscape and creating ecosystems that support many other species. To a beaver, a culvert can look like a tempting place to block and easily develop a deep pond to create their preferred habitat. While beaver ponds bring many vital ecological benefits to an area, blocked culverts or water conveyance structures can cause undesirable flooding to roads and other human-infrastructure. Sometimes beaver burrow into levees and dam walls. Since woody vegetation is their preferred food source, they can also cut down trees and other valuable vegetation. Most of these undesirable aspects of beaver presence can be managed with low-cost, easy-to-install strategies that prevent property damage, avoid the need to trap or kill the beaver, and retain the many benefits beaver bring.
With the use of flow-control devices, pond leveling, and strategic fencing, our team has the experience to mitigate potential damage to your property while allowing co-existence with our friend, the beaver.
Tree Protection
Protecting Individual Trees with Fencing
Individual trees can be spared from beaver gnawing by placing wire cylinders around the base of their trunks. The purpose of the heavy wire cylinder is simply to keep the beaver from getting to the tree. This is our preferred method to protect trees from beaver chewing. When done properly, this technique is 100% effective. It only takes a few minutes per tree, is inexpensive, and will remain effective for many years with no maintenance.
Protecting Large Areas (Grove or Orchard)
Sometimes a person may wish to protect an entire stand of trees without wrapping each trunk individually. In this case, a grove or section of orchard can be protected by encircling all the trees with a fence.
Keystone Fences
Road culverts are pipes or other structures that allow water to flow under a road. They are designed to handle normal and high storm flows without road flooding. Keeping culverts open and free-flowing protects our roads.
However, to a beaver, a culvert through a roadbed probably looks like a hole through a dam. Damming a culvert creates the largest impediment of water with the least amount of work. A blocked culvert can result in serious road flooding and damage, safety issues, and expensive repairs. Fortunately, nearly every road culvert can be protected from beaver damming. Usually, the most cost-effective, long-term, humane, and environmentally friendly option to resolve beaver damming problems at road culverts is to install a well-designed flow device.
A Keystone Fence is best utilized in situations where the goal is to prevent all beaver damming at the culvert in order to keep the water at the original stream level. Situations where this might arise are when the roadbed is very low and prone to flooding, or there is an abutter that could suffer damage if the stream level is elevated by a beaver dam.
Keystone Fences work by turning the easiest place for the beavers to dam (the culvert) into the most difficult. They also reduce the damming stimulus of the sound or feel of moving water. Once the Keystone Fence is in place the beavers will almost always choose to dam elsewhere and leave the road culvert alone.
Pond Leveler Pipes
It’s not unusual for beavers to raise the height of their dams to a height that the expanding water body encroaches on human land uses and property. This can cause conflicts between humans and beavers. Often these flooding conflicts can be resolved nonlethally with the use of a Pond Leveler flow device. A Pond Leveler is a device designed specifically to meet the water depth needs at an individual site, by installing a pipe through a beaver dam at a height through which water depth in the adjoining pond can be regulated.
For any beaver dam pipe system to work, it must be designed so that a beaver cannot detect the flow of water into the pipe. A properly designed Pond Leveler works by surrounding the submerged intake of the pipe with fencing to prevent the beavers from getting close enough to the pipe intake to detect water movement. (See the diagram below). If they cannot sense the water flow they leave it alone and do not try to clog the pipe. Since there is no discernible water flow through the intake fence, floating leaves and debris do not stick to it, and the intake fence never needs cleaning.
Water flows through the pipe by gravity, not a siphon. Therefore, the highest part of the pipe determines the pond level. The high point of the pipe is set in the dam. Raising or lowering the pipe outlet will raise or lower the pond level. Water will spill out of the pipe whenever the pond level is higher than the high point of the pipe. The flow will stop if the pond level drops below the peak of the pipe. This usually does not happen except in times of drought. After the drought, the pipe will resume flowing after rainfall raises the pond level higher than the pipe outlet.
Fence and Pipe Device
A Fence and Pipe flow device is the most common flow device used to prevent beavers from blocking road culverts or spillways in manmade dams. This flow device combines a beaver exclusion fence with a Pond Leveler pipe system. It has a 99% success rate, controls beaver damming, prevents flooding damage, requires little maintenance, and allows for the creation of an environmentally valuable wetland.
Dam Spillway and Retention Pond Devices
Many manmade devices designed to convey water become easy targets for beaver damming. This includes retention pond structures and spillways/sluiceways in manmade dams. A dammed drainage structure can quickly cause dangerous and expensive flooding issues.