Producer: Vince Patton Videographers: Nick Fisher, Todd Sonflieth, Michael Bendixen Editor: Todd SonfliethAdditional Photos & Video: Metro, Tualatin Hills Parks & Recreation, Cleanwater Services-Dave Weich, Vince Patton, Katie Harris, Frank Maestas
During a decade-long building boom around the Portland area, many builders have ignored zoning laws, permit rules, and property lines.
They steal their building materials and construct new homes in the secrecy of darkness.
A beaver in Bannister Creek Greenway.
Tualatin Hills Parks & Recreation District
Charlie and Sue Kornahrens, who live near Portland’s Raleighwood Park, discovered thieves were stealing their trees and knew immediately who the suspects were.
Urban
.
“See him?” asks Sue as she points to a beaver swimming in a pond behind their home. “Way out there. He’s going really fast!”
Thanks to beaver dams, the Kornahrens’ yard has flooded.
Yet they see no reason to be upset with the disappearance of their meadow.
“You know, it’s like a new adventure and it’s just fun,” says Sue. “I mean, the beavers were here before we were here so, you know, this is their home too.”
In Tigard, Kyle and Katie Harris have watched beavers raise babies behind their back fence.
Says, Katie, “We realized there was something rippling in the water and something large swimming in the creek. It was a very large beaver that was just munching along, chewing on sticks.*
Even their cat, Jicama, likes to watch the beavers. He will perch at the edge of the creek as beavers swim by just feet away.
Jicama, the Harris's cat, watches a beaver in the creek behind their house in Tigard.
Katie Harris
Kyle Harris says, “They’ve been wonderful for us. They’ve turned what would be a sleepy neighborhood stream into a little wetland and we get all the wildlife that comes with it.”
But beavers are not everyone’s favorite neighbors.
Also in Tigard, Frank and Linda Maestas watched Derry Dell Creek rise right up to their deck.
“It just kept getting higher and higher and it was under our deck,” says Frank. “And you couldn’t even walk on here without putting your waders on.”
They wrapped protective metal mesh around trees and their deck supports, installed lights on motion detectors, and left talk radio on overnight.
No success.
Frank then tried demolishing their dam.
The beavers kept building.
He added a perforated pipe to keep water flowing under their dam.
The beavers promptly clogged it with mud.
Frank says, “I’m more impressed, annoyed, the same. Kind of frustrating when you work on it all the time and they just keep beating you.”
The Maestas do not want the beavers killed. They concede that the damage the beavers are causing to their property leaves them conflicted.
Linda says, “If we didn’t live right here, I would be saying we should leave the beavers alone.”
A remote camera revealed beavers and nutria working together to build a dam at Smith & Bybee Lakes in northwest Portland
Metro
Carla Staedter, with
, says, “Everybody can look at this and have a different view of it. If you’re a natural resource person, there is no damage being caused.”
Carla says agencies like hers now appreciate how the beavers lock water into a watershed and help prevent larger flooding events.
10 years ago, the city might have immediately had the beavers trapped and killed.
They are never relocated.
Removal is still an option, but one they’re much more hesitant to deploy.
“Trapping is dramatic because the traps that are used hold them under the water,” says Carla. “and it just seems like a sad way for a beaver to go, by drowning.”
These days, public agencies all over the metro area are taking a new, gentler approach:
They’re finding ways to
.
Tigard did try to help Frank and Linda.
The city replaced frank’s pipe with one that’s better protected.
It also put in “beaver deceivers” to level the pond and protect private property, including the city’s new culvert.
Carla says the water level dropped two feet within the first week after the diversion was installed.
“We can get the benefits of the spreading out of the water into the flood plain,” says Carla, “but we save the folks on the other side of the trees from, from flooding their houses.”
In Beaverton, a big chunk of
is no longer open to the public, thanks to beavers.
Beavers have chewed down numerous trees in Greenway Park along Fanno Creek in Beaverton.
Vince Patton / Oregon Public Broadcasting
John Gaddis, a natural resource and trail specialist for
Tualatin Hills Parks & Recreation District
says, “We are in Beaver Town. There are no shortages of beavers in Beaverton, for sure.”
He unlocked a gate across a trail in the park and walked into the now off-limits area.
Ducks swim where people used to walk because of the dam. Cottonwoods lie scattered where beavers have chewed them through their trunks. Perpetual standing water blocks the trail and cuts the park in half.
A beaver dam on Fanno Creek has caused water to back up in Greenway Park.
Vince Patton / Oregon Public Broadcasting
Disc golfers weren’t happy because part of their course is
.
His noontime golf buddy, Mike Barrett, complains they only have three easy access golf holes before they hit the fence.
“Then we’ve got to take a long walk clear around to go play another two or three holes,” says Mike.
THPRD later
but kept a portion of the trail closed.
Just like the public works department in Tigard, Tualatin Parks thinks we’ve got to learn to live with beavers, not remove them.
“I completely understand why patrons are disappointed that they can’t use this section of trail,” says Gaddis.
He adds, “I think there’s a balance in there. I think that this will be a site where water levels will be able to persist to some degree. But there probably will be some degree of access through here. “We’re not finding many easy answers.”
Night Moves: Beavers and Nutria Build a Dam from oregonmetro on Vimeo.