Baffling the Builders

The beaver's comeback in North America is one of our continent's most remarkable ecological success stories. But the interests of beavers and people are sometimes at odds, and flooding from beaver dams is one of the most common troubles.

So every year The HSUS Wild Neighbors™ program offers workshops to teach highway, natural resource, and wildlife professionals humane solutions to beaver conflicts. Using devices to control water flow (bafflers or levelers) or prevent beavers from damming a vulnerable location (Beaver Deceivers™), problems can be solved without harming or removing the beavers. After a morning in the classroom, workshop attendees spend the afternoon getting wet and dirty installing beaver devices at local trouble spots.

One year after offering two beaver workshops near Seattle, Washington, we asked the attendees how they used what they learned. Half of the respondents—nearly all of those responsible for onsite beaver work—had installed or planned to install beaver devices.

One workshop's demonstration device was installed at a storm water management pond where beavers repeatedly dammed the outlet, threatening to overflow the pond and block fish from swimming to spawning grounds. Before the workshop, maintenance staff cleared the beavers' work at least once a week. Now the outlet only needs to be cleared once or twice a year.

A wildlife biologist who attended a workshop needed to prevent beavers from damming newly constructed dikes and water control structures. After our workshop, he installed Beaver Deceivers. The biologist reported, "So far, the use of Beaver Deceivers has saved me hours of work and I can let the beavers do their thing. This was probably the best seminar I've ever attended as far as practical information is concerned."

We also offer communities hands-on help with beavers. Metrorail, the second largest rail transit system in the country, carries about 181 million people each year in and around metropolitan Washington, D.C. Much of its Greenbelt, Maryland, station is underground and prone to flooding when it rains. Pumps keep the station dry. Beavers dammed a tiny tributary next to the station. While the stream was small, the dam held back enough water that the pumps had nowhere to send rainwater from the station. For a busy electric rail transit station, this was a serious problem.

At first Metrorail hired a trapper to remove the beavers, but more took their place. We quickly joined with other animal protection groups to suggest nonlethal alternatives, and Metrorail agreed to give them a try.

The HSUS brought biologist and flow device expert Skip Lisle of Beaver Deceivers, Inc., to the station. He found that the beavers were using the location only as a forage site, not as a home. Since the beavers didn't depend on this area for all of their food and were causing no problems at their lodge, the best solution was simply to block the culvert the beavers used to reach the dam with a fence. In only a few hours of time and a small investment in materials, we solved the problem for perhaps the next 20 years. After three months, Metrorail reports no new beaver activity threatening the Greenbelt station. The beavers—and area commuters—can rest easy.