Oregon volunteers keep Klamath beavers moving

Some facts about beavers:

Beavers may weigh 40 to 100 pounds.

Adult beavers are 20 to 30 inches in length and have 10- to 12-inch long tails.

Favorite foods include water lily tubers, clover, apples, leaves and bark.

Beavers mate for life, breed only once a year and average four kits per litter.

They can remain underwater 15 minutes without surfacing.

They have transparent eyelids that function much like goggles.

Source: Klamath Watershed Partnership

FORT KLAMATH, Ore. — Just like the animals they’re helping, Terry Simpson and Jayme Goodwin have been as busy as beavers.

Simpson and Goodwin, retired biologists who live in Crescent, are members of the Klamath Watershed Partnership’s beaver management team. Over the past two years, they and others on the eight-person team have relocated nine beavers.

When she was a Forest Service biologist for the Chemult Ranger District, Simpson learned how beavers can create better habitat for fish and help farmers and ranchers because their dams and resulting ponds can create season-long flood-irrigated pastures. A study in Washington determined beaver ponds created as much water storage as a large Columbia River dam. So, when the partnership’s beaver team was created, she quickly volunteered.

“I’m extremely interested in helping with beaver restoration, relocation and mitigation,” Simpson said, a sentiment echoed by Goodwin.

That’s been good news for Ginny Monroe, the Partnership’s outreach coordinator.

During ongoing working group sessions with Klamath Basin farmers and ranchers, Monroe said “the subject of beavers kept popping up,” which led to creation of a beaver management plan and a search for volunteers to implement the resulting program. Over the past two years, the team has worked to mitigate problems created by beavers, sometimes by relocating them to areas where their dams and ponds can benefit farmers and ranchers.

In cases where mitigation and relocation isn’t successful, landowners are allowed to kill beavers, something Monroe said the Partnership hopes to avoid.

As part of a project involving nuisance beavers in the Sevenmile area near Fort Klamath, Simpson and Goodwin waded into the drainage, where they used shovels and other equipment to replace a wire fence in the creek so water can again freely flow through a culvert under Sevenmile Road. The dams had begun blocking water flow through the culvert, which could have resulted in flooding that could wash out the road.

In some cases, problems are solved by mitigation, like the Sevenmile project. Other times, it’s necessary to capture and relocate problem beavers. As part of the partnership’s first-year process, areas with favorable habitat for relocating beavers were mapped by air and visited.

Simpson said the criteria included stream gradients of less than 6 percent, which reduces the chance dams are washed away. Year-round flows are necessary with stream widths of one to 11 yards, and a riparian valley about 33 yards wide, enough so willows, aspens, elders and other beaver-friendly trees can grow. Although beavers are vegetarians, they need to continually chew wood to prevent their always-growing teeth from growing into their skulls.

Sites in public lands are preferred, but wherever beavers are relocated, team members notify landowners five miles up and downstream. In 2012, one beaver was relocated while the other eight beavers were moved earlier this year. Captured beavers were taken to areas near Chemult and Bly. The work is done between mid-August and mid-October to give beavers a chance to prepare for winter. Captured beavers are radio tagged so their movements can be monitored.

“Historically the trend is they’re increasing, but they’re below what they were historically,” Monroe said, noting the increases partly stem from ongoing wetlands rehabilitation efforts.

“We’re pleased with the work that’s been done and there’s more to do,” she said. “We’re always looking for more volunteers.”

Beaver ponds can store spring runoff for late season release into streams.

Their dams and ponds create season-long, maintenance-free flood irrigated pastures; expand highly productive wetland pastures and increase forage production; slow high-velocity flows and reduce stream bank erosion; trap sediments behind dams; trap sediments to provide cleaner downstream water for fish; raise groundwater levels; reduce stream floods and droughts; can change intermittent streams into ones that flow year-round; cool water downstream of dams; and create meadows with rich soils and vegetation.