Beavers at Bald Hill Farm have been busy doing beaver things – building dams, dropping trees, creating habitat for turtles and dragonflies and amphibians and birds – and sometimes flooding out the City of Corvallis’s Bald Hill paved path, one of the only universally accessible paths in Corvallis.
That’s a problem. Along with our partners - Corvallis Parks & Recreation, Marys River Watershed Council, Benton County, Oregon and NOAA Fisheries West Coast - we have been working on a solution that keeps the path open and leaves space for the beavers to do their thing. Earlier this month we installed a notch exclusion fence, the first ever in Oregon.
A simple structure made of fence panels, fence posts, and wire, the exclusion fence is placed over a notch cut in the dam to lower the water level. It is designed to keep the beavers, who are triggered by the sound of flowing water, from working to repair the dam. It is also designed to allow fish to move freely through the ponds.
The fence has a floor on the pond side that the beavers can’t get under, and extends past the notch to keep them from working on it from below the dam. Beavers won’t climb the fence, but they will sometimes start to build mud walls around the sides of the structure.
Will Oregon’s first notch exclusion fence work? Will nature’s engineers find a way to conquer the fence and raise the water again, or will they be okay with a water level that still works for them but keeps the path open?
If you’d like to hear and see more about the beaver activity at Bald Hill Farm and this approach to living with beavers, drop in on Saturday, January 31st from 4-6 pm on the Bald Hill Multi Use Path, to talk to the partners and see the fence in action (and maybe some beavers reporting for work).
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January 30th
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