NYCkayaker What's up in the Bronx?

[ralph diaz]

Beavers have been the bane of my existence for most of the last year in a running battle I have been having with them.  The problem is a small culvert under the long access driveway to my home up here near New Paltz.  Beavers see a culvert as a hole in a perfectly good dam and quickly move to block it with an amazing amount of natural (wood, rocks, mud) and manmade materials (toy footballs and small plastic objects).

For the longest time I would regularly have to dig out their stuffing materials.   Putting a screen across the culvert opening would mean they would just pile the stuff against it enough to block the flow of water.   But it was easier to clear away every few days.  Then I discovered something on the Internet called a beaver deceiver, basically a long mesh tube about the diameter of the culvert attached to the mouth of the culvert and running out about 10 feet upstream.   I improvised one with a roll of mesh fencing.   Beavers are drawn to the sound of running water and frantically seek to block it.  They work on the part of the beaver deceiver closest to the culvet opening where the rushing water sound is loudest as it reverberates in the culvert walls.  But beavers don't see that the other end of the beaver deceiver is providing a channel for water to get through to the culvert.

This greatly reduced the need to clear away beaver daming material to just ever few weeks.  At this point, the beavers and I now have a working truce: they don't block more than the first half or so of the beaver deceiver and I don't clear away what they have done. 

Unfortunately the beavers have meanwhile been knocking down fairly large trees in neighboring  upstream properties.  Those landowners have arranged for a trapper to take care of them.   Too bad for the beavers and for me.  The ritual blocking by them and deblocking by me has been an interesting natural past time and part of the living in the country experience.   It makes Manhattan feel very far away.  Hmmm, maybe now that beavers have been spotted in The Bronx things may change for you down there. :-)

ralph diaz
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