Beaver Damage – Humane Wildlife Removal

What type of damage do beavers cause?

In the United States, beavers cause over $22 million a year in damage. This is unfortunate because beavers can be found almost everywhere-except the desert Southwest and the Florida Peninsula.

Beavers build dams because they are semi-aquatic and also because beaver dams offer protection from predators such as foxes, coyotes, bears, and wolves. They use sticks, mud, and sometimes smaller rocks to build these dams. While their lodges might sometimes act as a filtration system, they can also lead to flooding. This can affect athletic fields, damage crops, and timberlands, and they can also impede access to sites. To humans, they can be very annoying and costly.

Beavers kill hundreds of trees a year by stripping the bark of trees or sometimes tearing them down completely. Exposing the ground beneath can lead to soil erosion and can even expose river banks to the sun, leading to higher temperatures. As a consequence, these higher temperatures can affect the ecology.

Beaver dams can affect infrastructure. Flooding and saturation of soil can lead to the dismantling of highways, roads, train tracks, and utility lines. This is hazardous to those who are travelling and an extra cost to fix.
Fallen trees can hit utility lines and buildings. If you live in a wooded area that beavers frequent, you might notice trees falling. These can sometimes even fall on your house or property. Leading to an extra cost of trying to fix the damage. Or sometimes it can be as annoying as finding a whole tree laying across your driveway.
While beaver lodges can act as natural filters that keep sediment and toxins from flowing further downstream, they can be an obstacle for fish. Beaver lodges can hinder fish such as salmon from swimming upstream or moving about freely. This can affect fish populations and other living things that are affected by this food chain.
Due to the thinning of stream flow, some scientists believe that beaver dams might lead to more water evaporation in streams over time if they become shallower. The dams themselves might be useful to otters, water shrews, birds and breeding fish but the longevity of the rivers or streams might be threatened

On the other hand, beaver dams can actually be beneficial. They can become a good water source for livestock and the lodges also can act as a filter from nitrogen and phosphorus. When these substances are found in high quantities, they can lead to increased growth in harmful algal blooms. This is bad for plants, animals, and humans.

If you are considering getting rid of them due to the aforementioned issues, consider setting live traps and baiting them with beaver scent or something like peanut butter or jelly. You can also consider fencing areas or wrapping trees to prevent them from coming back.