Beaver Dams and the Moose population on the property. Drain or not drain?

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Home3

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I intend to drain half of the Beaver ponds on my property and evict its filthy occupants (Legally of course :rolleyes:). These are newly flooded areas and lots of healthy hard wood trees are slowly dying there. I am keeping the older ponds with no trees.
I have a healthy Moose population on my property. I was wondering how reducing the flooded area to half, will effect the moose. Good.....bad...none...depends......? Appreciate comments.
 
Home3 said:
I intend to drain half of the Beaver ponds on my property and evict its filthy occupants (Legally of course :rolleyes:). These are newly flooded areas and lots of healthy hard wood trees are slowly dying there. I am keeping the older ponds with no trees.
I have a healthy Moose population on my property. I was wondering how reducing the flooded area to half, will effect the moose. Good.....bad...none...depends......? Appreciate comments.
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If anything, I'd expect a healthier environment overall for moose, what with preventing the loss of further vegetation. That said, moose are pretty hardy.
 
Home3 said:
I intend to drain half of the Beaver ponds on my property and evict its filthy occupants (Legally of course :rolleyes:). These are newly flooded areas and lots of healthy hard wood trees are slowly dying there. I am keeping the older ponds with no trees.
I have a healthy Moose population on my property. I was wondering how reducing the flooded area to half, will effect the moose. Good.....bad...none...depends......? Appreciate comments.
Click to expand...

If you kill off the beaver, all of the dams will sooner or later (likely sooner) wash out.
As for the moose, in this area anyway they spend more time in the summer feeding in ponds than they do in the fall, and by mid to late fall, they stop feeding in them all-together, and start feeding on browse in the uplands. Most of my moose hunting is done during deer season in November, and most of the moose that I see are feeding in the maples, where they strip the bark off the saplings at that time of year.
 
Rancher friends use to irrigate from a beaver dam, and it would get plugged. They now use large siphons, taking the water over the top while maintaining the dam. Beaver Dams make better moose environment that man made "DAMNS".
 
From a purely conservation standpoint, I respectfully suggest you have it backwards.

Drain or draw-down the "old" stagnant beaver ponds for at least two years (or longer) to allow them to regenerate and green-up ... and leave the new ones alone (unless they are blocking access or are in some way a nuisance of another sort). We tend to think of beavers as troublesome, but they actually provide a greater benefit to many forms of wildlife than many could imagine. The more fresh feed in and around new beaver ponds the better ... while older ponds are basically barren and of little to no value to wildlife. By draining and allowing the old stagnant ponds to regenerate, your property will be more attractive to moose.

Talk to a knowledgeable wildlife biologist and try and understand his management recommendations.
 
Another way to think of it is, the mature hardwoods that die off can allow more sunlight to the ground, allowing more young trees to start growing...which moose love. If the area is moist there will probably be quite a bit of willow come up...which is a good thing for moose.

Of course it's hard to predict what will happen without being able to see first hand what the habitat is like.
 
Are these dams all on the same watercourse? IMHO you are wasting your time. Why not wait till winter and cut the hardwood you want to save. Easier then initiating a battle that is seldom won.

Either way think hard about it. When that dam goes you will loose some amount of ground to erosion. Could be hardly noticable or you could loose alot. If you got a bridge or crossing down stream don't mess with your protectors.

BTW the through the dam pipe idea great IF you can get an excavator to it once or thrice a year to clear the inlet. nice theory for clear water irragtion ditches but not so useful in a forest.
 
If the presence of the dams are causing damage to your property, remove the dams. For the removal to be effective, the beavers must be killed or the dam will simply be rebuilt. If its possible in your area, blasting can solve both problems and is easier and more cost effective than mechanical removal. If there are a number of lodges which contain a sustainable population of animals, all is good. But if the wanted and unwanted dams are created by a single lodge, and you inadvertently kill the dame, any surviving beavers will probably leave the area, and chances are that the dams you want maintained will deteriorate and fail in short order; which could result in flooding and loss of habitat at least over the short term.
 
Thanks guys. I understand that there are pros and cons to having Beaver ponds on any property. I am going to leave them alone for now and think about draining some of them a bit more.
 
I need some advise with respect to the latest beaver pest control regulation in Ontario i.e. hunting, trapping .....etc. My info is old and incomplete.

My furry tenants have now expanded their ponds to cover most of the property. Of course that means war. :p I have partially demolished a handful of the new dames (a few times each) without killing them. You would never guess what happened next!! :D

Do they come out in winter to fix breaches in their dams, like they do in warmer times?
 
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