Beaver Action

When I waded through the concrete channel that drains into the Speed River in May, there was nothing in it but concrete and debris. Since then, the channel has seen some construction. Beavers have laid sticks straight across the outflow.

Water still gets through. The debris doesn’t. The way the sticks are laid, the dam works like a screen, and the upstream side had collected the typical mix of debris that gets left along the shore of the storm channel and then washes downstream when it rains.

We spent two days taking the rubbish out and leaving the dam alone.

Most of the trash was woven in with the sticks, so we eased each piece free without moving the branches around it. We came away with two buckets: jugs stained yellow from the water, bags gone brittle and brown, slabs of foam, and someone’s lost refillable bottle. Every stick went back where the beavers put it.

On the riverbank nearby, someone had dumped a large carpet, so we took that too.

The beavers built this structure to hold back water. It’s also holding back plastic that would otherwise be on its way down the Speed to the Grand. They’ll keep building, and we’ll keep coming back to empty it.