Beaver Teasers
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BEAVER TEASERS

Beavers have lived on lakes for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years without causing harm to the nearby communities. In fact, beavers are considered a keystone species to an aquatic system,  meaning that other species depend on them to provide vital wetland habitat and food sources.  In addition to creating more biodiversity for wildlife and plants, other benefits of a beaver ecosystem are erosion abatement and flood control, and the reduction of sedimentation in rivers and streams. 

 Skip Lisle, a wildlife biologist who has spent several years beaver proofing road culverts in the Penobscot Nation near Chesterville, spoke to a group of ecology minded people who journeyed to that area to meet with the beaver expert (in the summer of 2001). 

The problem with beavers has been in the expansion of homes and roads into areas normally used as beaver habitat.  The beaver population has burgeoned, but has less and less area in which to build their dams and establish homes.  Killing beavers is not a good solution.  Their presence is irrelevant if you build a flow system such as Lisle’s Deceiver, a trapezoidal fence made with cedar posts and six-gauge concrete reinforcing wire with 6x6 inch squares.  It is narrow at the culvert but widens upstream.  While allowing fish passage but preventing beavers from carrying branches into the culvert, the device also silences the sound of flowing water, reducing the beavers’ stimulus for crating dams.

Tripp Lake beaver aficionados have long debated the plusses and minuses of beavers, with the result that occasionally volunteers break down their dams (at the outlet) but they are invariably rebuilt within a short time.  “Busy as a beaver” is not just a saying! 

 

 

 The Bill Henderson’s have spoken to Warden Service in Gray about the beavers cutting off his newest tree plantings.  Advice to him was: 1) trap and move them or 2) put tar paper around the bottom of each tree.  Bill going to have a talk with the beavers and try the tarpaper.

 
The common perceptions that beavers eat wood and destroy fish spawning areas simply isn’t true, according to Lisle.   Beavers are herbivores and their diet consists of cattail roots, aquatic vegetation and herbs, the inner bark of some hardwoods and pine, and the buds and leaves of trees.  “They have a very diverse diet and that’s one thing that people don’t understand.  In their initial pond-building years, beavers heavily depend on trees, but once they establish their ponds they create their food.  Good things happen ecologically with beavers,” he said.

 For now we shall continue to debate.  But for more info about the use of water flow devices to curtail flooding problems caused by beavers, visit www.wildlifedamagecontrol.com,  beaverfloodcontrolbklet.htm or www.crittercontrol.com (Ray Saucier) or call him at (207) 324-7444.