Natural resource management experts advocate for a shift in beaver management

The Hill County Park Board's Rules and Regulations Committee met Wednesday night to discuss beaver management in Beaver Creek Park, a long controversial subject, and local wildlife experts invited to the meeting advocated for a more comprehensive approach to beaver management, not just lethal trapping.

This is the third in a series of meetings meant to evaluate what the Hill County Park Board should do to manage beaver in the park.

The speakers at the meeting were Amy Chadwick, an ecologist working at Great West Engineering, Nathan Korb of The Nature Conservancy and Elissa Chott of the National Wildlife Federation.

All three said that trapping is not only a useful, but necessary tool for beaver management, but on its own it will never address the larger problems areas like Beaver Creek Park face when it comes to dealing with the animals and more methods of management are needed.

Chadwick in particular said, based on her observations of Beaver Creek Park, the matter of addressing the effects of beaver is only a symptom of a larger issue that needs to be addressed by realigning how the park is managed as a whole to some degree.

She said, looking back through history, the way the park looks today does not represent its natural state of being.

She said before humans began trapping beaver the area was a swampy network of wetlands with a complex multichannel stream flowing through it, but since the beaver population was decimated a couple centuries ago and the stream deliberately altered by humans the park's framework was changed.

The problem, Chadwick said, is that environments like Beaver Creek Park as a result of their landscape, have a tendency to try to return to their natural state, and much of the infrastructure of the park was built to accommodate the new landscape, not the one the park is returning to.

She said because of this disconnect a tension has developed between the environment's tendency to return to its natural state, and more specifically the beavers that drive that change, and human infrastructure.

To address this problem, she suggested that a more comprehensive approach be taken to manage the Park, and the beaver that live on it using a variety of methods including upgrading infrastructure to better match the nature of the park, devices like beaver deceivers, culvert fences, pond levelers and lethal trapping.

Chadwick said trapping can be a great tool for solving short-term problems with beaver in a given area, but because the habitat hasn't changed it will be filled by beaver again and soon, which is where alternative control methods like beaver deceivers and pond levelers can solve problems more effectively, but she said this would be better explained by Chott later in the meeting.

She said trapping may help address beavers' undesirable effects in an immediate sense, but it will not address the fundamental problems that bring the animals into constant conflict with humans and their infrastructure.

"If we only go for that (lethal trapping) then all we're doing is a short-term solution because the underlying cause is still there," she said.

She said a tremendous amount of trapping would be required to even put a dent in the problem to begin with.

Chadwick said it's important to realize that neither she nor the other presenters is advocating that the park return to the swampy mess that it used to be, and she realizes that the park ultimately exists for human use, but by addressing the issue more flexibly, using a variety of different methods park users can keep their recreational activities and facilities, reduce conflict with beavers, and reap the unique ecological benefits Beaver Creek Park and its titular residents provide, which she said are substantial.

"We need to put all of this in the context of how can we make this useable for people," she said.

Many of these ideas were also expressed by retired Rangeland Management Specialist Lou Hagener in an interview earlier this week.

He said he thinks the Beaver Creek Park Board needs to create a broader plan to manage the park's ecosystem and non-lethal methods of beaver damage management need to be part of that instead of just trapping.

He said it's not as simple as just beaver population control, but grazing, infrastructure, road placement, and runoff are all part of how the park works.

"You wanna talk about water quality in the park, you've got to start talking about the livestock grazing," Hagener said.

He said the park board's resistance to these ideas has been frustrating.

Chadwick said during Wednesday's meeting that Beaver Creek Park is possibly the most complex ecosystem she's ever examined in this capacity, and, because of that, the ideal solution will require a great deal of observation and evaluation to work out the finer details, but if the ideal solution is going to find it will require many tools and ways of thinking.

"If we want to have a long-term solution we've got to look at this not just from and ecological standpoint, but one of engineering and infrastructure," she said. "I don't think one is going to get you there."

Chadwick said things like installing small bridges, increasing culvert sizes and simply being wary about the placement of new structures are ways to reduce the frequency and intensity of beaver-human conflict.

She said upfront costs to some of these things will exist, but many funding sources exist for just this kind of thing, and it will pay off in the long run by preventing beaver-related damage that will just keep happening and take more and more money to fix.

Korb echoed this sentiment later.

"There will be cost to dealing with those beavers, but it will be a matter of who's paying that cost," he said.

Beaver benefits

Chadwick and the other presenters said beaver can undeniably cause big problems for people, but from an ecological standpoint they are extremely valuable, including to humans.

"Beavers are a benefit, even with the headaches that they bring," she said.

She said the wetlands they create support a tremendous number of species in Montana that can't live anywhere else and allowing sections of the park that don't see much human use to revert back to their natural wetland state will create biologically diverse ecosystems which benefit human and other animals.

She said beaver are responsible for building up many of the meadows that local residents use for hay to this day and their disappearance from the area due to over trapping centuries ago created massive ecological problems.

But beyond the concern for other animals, humans benefit from the environment beaver create as well.

She said beavers can actually reduce the impacts of large-scale floods by creating areas that absorb high-flows by spreading them out and containing them.

"What beavers do is they keep water on the floodplain," she said.

Korb also spoke to the animals' usefulness to humans.

He said he's been observing the animals in similar environments for many years, and while they can be a pain to deal with in a lot of ways, the environment they create can be a huge help when dealing with drought.

He said droughts, as they become more frequent and more intense, are a huge threat to habitats in the area including those humans love to recreate in, and the environments beaver create are excellent at storing water underground which can mitigate the effects of droughts.

Korb said the biodiversity they create can also be a huge draw for nature observers and recreationists.

He said he remembers a story told by two ranchers he knew in the Centennial Valley, brothers who fished in a nearby stream just like Beaver Creek, catching huge fish all the time.

But when they had the beaver in the area trapped to get better pasture and manage water more easily, they accidentally destroyed the ecosystem that made those fish so plentiful.

"They never saw another big fish in there again," he said.

Chadwick said their dams act as natural filters as well, increasing water quality and moderating sedimentation.

She said the complex stream systems they help create are excellent for fish because they create areas with different properties that benefit the various life-stages of many different fish, not just good spawning areas.

This complexity is practically impossible to replicate, she said, and these areas can also create firebreaks that act as a refuge for animals that seek to escape wildfires.

"Beavers add a level of complexity that we can't possibly do on our own," she said.

As for regulating the beavers, Korb said, densely beaver-populated areas usually don't stay that way for very long due to the disease tularemia.

He said the higher the concentration of beaver gets, the more likely an outbreak will occur, which reduces the population tremendously and as a result many populations more or less regulate themselves to some degree.

Committee members raised the concern of humans catching the disease from the animals but Chadwick said tularemia is generally transmitted to humans only through direct contact with infected wounds on the animal.

She said the disease is not something that should be introduced to an area deliberately, but if it's already present it will keep them under control in many cases.

Answers about beaver deceivers and pond levelers

Chott spoke specifically about non-lethal methods of beaver management, including the oft-discussed beaver deceivers, as well as pond levelers which she often works on with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

She said she and her colleagues have a great deal of experience with both of these devices and have had great success mitigating the damage beaver can cause in areas where lethal trapping has not been as effective.

Beaver deceivers and culvert fences are used to keep beaver from plugging culverts by masking the sound and flow of water through the structures, which prevents the animals' damming instincts from being triggered, and by making it prohibitively difficult for those that do notice to access the structure.

She said the design of these devices varies significantly based on the structure and stream it feeds into but are designed to let debris and even large fish get through without issue while preventing beavers from entering.

Chott said these devices have been enormously helpful for road crews, and if they are well constructed can last more than a decade with some maintenance.

She said they range in cost, but the ones she's constructed are usually a few hundred dollars total.

She also explained pond levelers, which involve feeding a pipe through an existing beaver dam to restore most of its flow without the beaver noticing.

Chott showed a number of examples of the devices, which also vary in design based on circumstances and have also been very effective, especially in the Anaconda area.

She said the reason they can be better than trapping is because they address the problems beaver can create for humans but still keep the animals in place, which prevents new beaver from coming in and starting the cycle over again like removing them would.

She said these devices usually run between $100 and $150, but larger ones can be more expensive.

However, she said, cost sharing programs do exist and she and her colleagues can help find ways to keep costs non-prohibitive.

Chott said they can also help with getting permits for these devices, which is usually necessary, and can teach people how to properly install them.

Despite the relatively inexpensive materials the devices use, they can be tricky to construct and install properly and she's encountered many who mistakenly lose faith in the devices after trying to make one themselves and having it not work due to design flaws that they don't see.

She gave numerous examples of people who made impressive efforts to recreate the design on their own using images online, but made small mistakes that caused them to not work.

Chott said she also has experience with tree wrapping, which keeps beaver from cutting down specific trees that are vital to an area's health.

She said trees can be surrounded with a small but sturdy mesh fence which will reliably keep the animals away preventing property damage and the loss of important trees.

Unfortunately, she said, many try to do this using chicken wire because it's so cheap, but it's not sturdy enough and will end in failure especially if applied too tightly which can kill the trees.

Hagener said in the interview that he thinks tree loss is a legitimate concern in Beaver Creek Park, but he thinks the concerns raised by members of the public at previous meetings are overblown.

He said he's been to sites where people have reported that beaver cut down all the trees and there are still plenty left, so he doesn't think it's as big of an ecological issues as some make it out to be.

Hill County Commissioner Mark Peterson raised the concern of livestock messing with these fences, but Chott said they can be secured with pins in the ground and in the areas she's worked where there is livestock she's never seen it become an issue.

Despite her successes, Chott said, sometimes lethal trapping is the only way to solve a problem, often because the priorities of landowners don't really make non-lethal methods viable, but they are still a great option in many cases.

All three presenters said a place like Beaver Creek Park will benefit from these techniques financially because the cost of making installing these devices is lower, longterm than dealing with the damage inflicted by beaver every few years.

After each presentation, members of the committee asked the speakers questions, with Peterson being the source of the majority of them.

Referring to a slide Chadwick presented with examples of animals that require beaver-created-wetlands to thrive he said, "I don't see the public on there."

Chadwick assured him and the committee that human use was central to her analysis of the situation.

During her presentation, she said while all three speakers have expertise relevant to the matter of beaver management, none of them specialize in population control specifically and all recommend that the committee work with a specialist at Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks to get more information.

Peterson asked her about how to control the population anyway and said he would ask every speaker that same question.

When Korb was asked he echoed Chadwick and said while population control is part of the issue he can't provide specific answers in that area.

After the meeting Peterson said the specialist the speakers cited was someone he knew and hoped would be able to speak at the meeting, but was unable to attend for medical reasons.