If at first you do not succeed, try, try again

If you choose a line of work that involves working directly with beavers, be prepared to adapt and meet their persistent, unending work ethic. This is the take-home message for me as I have been working with some private landowners in Walla Walla, Washington, to help them learn to live with beavers. Nothing comes easy when working in nature; there are no straight edges, level surfaces, or boxed solutions. Instead, one has to be creative and adaptive, with the ability to work with uneven, rounded surfaces. This is one of many reasons why I followed my heart to work with nature. That and the endless curiosity that will never be fully satisfied with the intricate and fractal beauty of the place we call home. 

Beavers, by nature, really only want one thing: water and more of it. This leads to all of their other requirements for survival: food, cover, reproduction, and enjoyment. In their endeavor to make this a verdant, watery world, they often unintentionally come to a crossroad with their human relatives. This can be summed up succinctly as water level control. 

Now, I will take you to an example of how this plays out from the perspective of a Stewardship Manager trying to foil the beavers in an attempt to keep them around for all the wonderful features they bestow on a landscape. Too many to mention really, but I will call out a few: climate resilience through water storage and fire resilient landscapes, fish and wildlife habitat that is unparalleled in nature, and improved water quality. 

I digress, back to Walla Walla. I received a phone call from some professional colleagues earlier this year. They were fielding a call from some private landowners about concerns with beaver activity. As it turns out, one of the landowners, where the beavers primarily reside, was happy with their occupation. However, the immediate downstream neighbor was not so impressed as the water world the beavers were creating was reconnecting old river channels and elevating water levels that created standing water on a small portion of their property. 

Since I recently completed training in helping people coexist with beavers offered through the Beaver Institute. I was called in to assess the situation and provide a recommendation to meet both landowners' needs - keep the beaver and lower the water level. After walking the site, seeing the bountiful habitat and species enjoying it, I leaned into my training and experience. I came to the conclusion that installing two notch exclusion fences, one in each dam, would be the best course of action to effectively lower the water level without evicting the beavers.

Notch exclusion fencing

This is done by removing a notch in the beaver dam and replacing it with a rectangular fence that, in theory, keeps the beavers from reconstructing their original dam height, therefore effectively lowering the water level while keeping everyone happy, including the beavers. 

Not so fast, or at least that's what the beavers said, effectively damming the notch exclusion devices and rendering them ineffective unless cleaned at an interval that no one had time to keep up with. There is that persistent part again. 

Ok, back to the drawing board. Time to unleash some creativity and more sweat to match their persistence. Ah ha, I will simply adaptively manage this structure and alter it to a fence and pipe design. This design puts a caged intake out of reach from the beavers, allowing the capacity of the pipe to effectively convey the water downstream through the fence and out of reach from our furry friends.

Fence and pipe design

You guessed it, this design also did not achieve the desired results because the pipe elevation and capacity were not adequate and additional damming on the fence portion of the structure.

How does that old saying go…third time is a charm. I certainly hope so. Beavers 2, Stewardship Manager 0. One may be tempted to give up at this point; relocate the beavers, not me. I figured the beavers are just training me so I can be a better coexistence professional by trying all the techniques out in one spot! 

Some motives had changed for the landowner with the beavers as well, leading to me deploying a more classic pond leveler in the primary dam while leaving the secondary dam open. 

Sometimes, you have to never give up and be willing to try something new or different. These beavers have certainly educated me to be a better Stewardship Manager, through practicing a persistent work ethic to match theirs while being open to willing to adapt to the circumstances. 

Pond leveler through the primary dam