2025 May 25 Leave it to Beavers

Like so many of our native wildlife friends, beavers are often seen as pests. They chop down trees and cause floods. I was lucky enough to see the other side of the story on Thursday at the Beaver Coexistence Workshop led by Meg Hennessey, the Watershed Coordinator with Cuyahoga Soil and Water. She and Steve Ecrement of Ohio Beaver Strategies set the record straight about beaver  facts and fiction, beaver behavior, and solutions for working together with nature.

Steve Ecrement teaching us all about beaver behavior.

Beavers build up dams where they hear running water. Their ideal living conditions are a big pond and flooded canals through wetlands. They are excellent aquatic mammals, but they are vulnerable to predators on land. They are voracious vegetarians who need all kinds of plant life from tall trees to diverse aquatic plants for survival. When they build their dams and lodges, they also build habitat for other wetland-loving species like swans who safely nest atop lodges and muskrats that burrow around the cavities. Something like 80% of biodiversity is found in wetlands; third only to the Amazon rainforest and coral reefs. Since beavers engineer these amazing wetlands, they are a keystone species. They build in landscapes that are resilient to drought, flooding and wildfires. 

Good presenters and interesting representatives of other agencies in attendance such as Cleveland Metroparks, Lorain Metroparks, Summit Metroparks, Ohio Division of Wildlife, Ohio Department of Natural Resources, and Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

Beavers were trapped almost to extinction in the 1800s, which happens to be when many of our cities were built. The urban landscape did not have beavers in mind as it developed. Now that there is a resurgence of beavers, humans have to find a way to work together so our homes don’t flood and theirs do.

This is a way to level a pond and protect a drain. The tube goes through the dam. Steve is explaining. I get the idea but I’d love to be there for installation to really get it.

As a permaculturist at heart, I am always looking for natural solutions to our “problems” and finding the opportunities in the tough issues. Beavers are the solution if we’re looking for ways to filter water, mitigate drought and flooding…so what happens when they get ahold of human-built infrastructure that is meant for those same purposes? Sometimes they decide to “redesign” our handiwork. Beavers are known to dam up culverts and build wetlands where roads exist. This is a “problem” for both of us. Many people try and fail to solve the problem by killing beavers. That “solution” doesn’t work because a new beaver will be drawn to that same opportune spot to do their work. Steve Ecrement presented some awesome ways to work with beaver behavior though fencing, tubing and creating fake dam structures. I may not have picked up all the details…but I learned that there are creative solutions to beaver issues that don’t involve killing them.

Here we are at Bath Nature Preserve in the mud, which is actually a beaver dam. The other side of the dam is a big pond.

At the end of the day, we took a look at a beaver dam close up. Our presence there was definitely noticed by our beaver friends as I’m sure our boots in the mud created new water trickles that needed immediate beaver repair. As soon as we left, we could see a beaver swim right up to the bank we messed up. 

I’d rather be in a wetland than an office!

This song by Jesse Welles sums it all up!