Newly Established Beavers Cause Problems in Fall
First tree damage…next flooding. As neighbors, beavers don’t often make the best first impression.
I’ve never had a problem with beavers before…why now?
It’s a legitimate question that many people find themselves asking this time of year as never before witnessed problems with beaver suddenly become evident.
In this blog post, we’ll explain the timing behind this uptick in beaver activity and give some suggestions for what can be done about it. We’ll use some pictures and descriptions from a recent beaver removal job to illustrate.
Young Beavers in New Places
The Fall always brings an increase in the number of calls associated with problem beavers. Why?
It is because this is the the time of year when young beavers get serious about spending their first winter away from the huts and ponds of their birth (natal territory).
Throughout the spring and early summer young beavers (born two years previously) leave or are kicked out of their parents’ huts and ponds. (Unlike us humans, they can’t just build a hut next to their parents’ hut for an occasional free meal and a cheap babysitter.) During this time, young beavers begin to roam looking for a suitable territory and a mate with whom to start a family . This causes some to travel far and wide.
Newly mature beavers need to open up new, uninhabited territories on the fringes of their parents’ range where suitable habitat exists. (This is why the term beaver “colony” is so fitting.)
By early Fall the wandering comes to an end. They’ve likely paired with a mate, have found a suitable homestead, and begin preparations for Winter in earnest. It’s the time when “busy as a beaver” kicks into high gear. And the busier they get preparing for winter, the more they are likely to be noticed or cause concern for people already living in their newly acquired territory.
Beaver Damage Noticeable
And what preparations for winter get them noticed the most?
- Tree gnawing/cutting for food and shelter
- Dam building and subsequent flooding
Shelter: Here is a picture of a relatively new beaver hut at an Akron area apartment complex.
The complex has a series of retention ponds and at some point a pair of beavers (one male and one female) showed up and claimed it as their own.
This beaver pair did a lot of cutting for the building of a main den and a smaller secondary den (sometimes called a feed den). These brand new constructions use a lot of raw materials.
With much work to do, a pair of beavers can gnaw through a lot of trees in a short time.
Food: Even more cutting is done for the sake of food storage for winter. Beavers make a large cache of food (branches of trees) under water close to their huts. To humans, it looks like a large brush pile in the water because that’s what it is. The larger the pile is, the better the chance the beavers will make it through the winter. Think about it, once the ice forms solidly, the beavers are stuck under the ice or in their huts. In a Winter like last years, that’s a long time. Much like us not being able to make it to the grocery during a blizzard, if the beavers don’t have enough in their feed pile, they’ll go hungry until conditions change and they can make it onto land.
Safety: For beavers, deep water equals safety. Relatively slow on land, beavers are masters in the water and rely on it for their safety. Thus, they are skilled and steadfast dam builders because a solid dam assures deep (safe) water.
Dam building is often the last straw for humans who may find the beavers novel at first but very troublesome once the dams start to cause flooding.
In our recent job, the beavers had placed a dam across the spillway of the retention pond. Water which would normally drain was not able to do so. The water level of the pond got higher and the parking lot flooded.
We were called for beaver removal because the combination of cutting and damming was just no longer tolerable.
Managing Beaver Problems
The best way to manage a beaver problem is dissuade them from choosing your waterway as their permanent home. This is a lot easier said than done.
Something as simple as cutting brush back from the edges of ponds could pay off big dividends in terms of dissuading beavers from moving in. Or, if cutting has been noticed early, protecting larger trees with wire saves them and encourages a beaver to move along.
But, if you’re reading this post, it’s probably because the beavers have already moved into a waterway near you. In that case, we recommend trapping the beavers and removing their constructions.
Trapping Problem Beavers
We removed the beavers from the apartment complex by trapping them. We captured a male and a female that were in the two year old size range.
FYI: Under State of Ohio law, beavers cannot be relocated from one place to another. We do have the ability to live trap them. But, if we do live trap them, we must release them on the property from which they were trapped. This, obviously, doesn’t solve the problem. Thus following state law, these beavers were euthanized as a part of the trapping process.
Removing Construction Materials
Removing the beavers will manage the problem in the short term. It is advisable, however, to also remove the huts and dams the beavers have constructed.
Abandoned beaver huts provide an open invitation for more beavers to move in next year. Beavers are opportunists, and doing a remodel on an abandoned hut and dam is much easier than building new. Beavers are masters at reusing the cuttings of other beavers.
If beavers have found your waterway once, there is a high probability they’ll find it again. You want to make their moving back in next year, as newly mature beaver from nearby colonies disperse, as uninviting as possible.
Beaver Removal for Stark, Summit, and Portage Counties
If you are experiencing flooding issues caused by beavers and are in our service area, please contact Frontline Animal Removal.
There are beavers in more places than most people realize. Sure, they are in some of the more suburban and rural places in our service area. But, many would be a little surprised to know that even in the more urban parts of Akron, Canton, and Kent there are beavers present. Wherever there is a waterway and a good source of food, beavers are likely to be testing it out for suitability.
For more information, refer to our
