Beaver Damage Problems in 2011; Repairs Continue in 2012

Beavers have invaded us again, only 100 feet from our best stand of young black walnut trees!
Job 1: Protect our Black Walnut Trees from the Latest Beaver Attack!
Job 2: Put the soil back and build the creek banks back to better than their original height

Check out our youtube videos describing the restoration project in more detail:
(or--- look at the short picture gallery toward the bottom of this page)

Our Beaver problems began in about 1980 and have continued on and off since then. There had never been beavers on our place in anyone's memory, which goes back to the 1930's and before. That's because the fur trapping trade was still in full bloom. In the 1980's someone threw red paint onto someone else's fur coat in Los Angeles, CA. if I remember correctly, and that began the demise of the fur trade.
In just a few years, the population of many fur bearing animals multiplied many times in our neighborhood and so did the problems with them. Beavers ate the forests and mink ate the chickens and the rabbits, for instance.

The first time we had beavers, we thought they were cute, but that view disappeared as soon as they started girdling trees that they didn't use at all, for anything! Don't think of beavers as conservationists. They kill your woodlands in several ways. First they kill trees by girdling and cutting them down. Then, when they dam up a stream, they kill many more trees by drowning them.

Here's a short series of pictures to show progress from a full pond back to a small stream, with the dams removed and the pond filled in. We even added a culvert to the creek so we can drive vehicles across it: