Beaver dams knocked out of Farmington creek

Garth Meyer, Gazette Reporter | Jan 30, 20130

A transient juvenile had to be dealt with last week in Farmington.

After the south fork of Pine Creek neared flood levels, a beaver dam and three other obstructions were removed to keep the waterway flowing through town.

Evidence of the culprit: This tree branch shows the distinct work of a beaver along Pine Creek.

Due to the type and location of knaw marks on creekside trees, the beaver was deemed of juvenile age, who has since left the area.

The matter began with Mayor Ron Dugan receiving calls about clogs in the creek as it passes through town.

He walked over there and found four significant obstructions.

“To a layman it’s kind of hard to tell,” he said. “But the last one was definitely a beaver dam.”

The knaw marks on piled willow branches were the tell-tale sign.

So Dugan called the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, who referred him to David Early, a Nuisance Wildlife Control Operator licensed by the WDFW.

A trapper who builds his own traps, Early told Dugan there were four ways to handle a beaver problem; trapping and killing it, trapping and relocating it, putting fences around trees near the creek, and removing all of the branches from the dam then sticking a pipe in it, with a screen.

“I’m not hopping in there in the middle of winter to put a culvert in a beaver dam,” said Dugan.

Nonetheless, something needed to be done.

“With water building up, if there was a heavy rain, there would have been flooding,” said the mayor.

“The water was real high and it wasn’t flowing under the bridge to Five-Mile,” said neighbor Bill Hansen, referring to the junction at Highway 27. “It was getting up to where it was getting into my yard if they didn’t do anything.”

So Dugan called a local resident with a backhoe.

Mark Hellinger, the owner of Audiopile, a sound components business, has a backhoe in order to clear snow near his warehouse.

Hellinger soon arrived in the snow with the heavy equipment.

With the creek jammed in places with four-inch thick ice, he backed into position and with the long, hydraulic arm of the backhoe, broke up the dam in one spot and errant branches and debris in the three others, allowing the cold water to flow.

“If I can take a step that saves somebody else a hundred steps, it’s pretty easy with a backhoe,” said Hellinger. “The creek was at flood stage. There were some residents that weren’t wet yet, but it looked imminent.”

The whole job took five to ten minutes.

“Just like a kid playing in a creek with a stick, it wasn’t any big deal,” said Hellinger. “A backhoe is a versatile tool.”

Later, Dugan and Early walked the area. The trapper noted the presence of mink, otter and raccoon tracks, but no beaver.

His conclusion was that the animal who had built the dam was a juvenile transient beaver who has taken off. The main evidence, he noted, was that if the beaver was older, the knaw marks on the willow trunks would have been higher up.

“What I found was no recent activity,” said Early. “The signs that were there were not fresh, nor were there signs of residential activity.”

Fresher signs of beaver activity, Early said, would be wood chips on top of snow or a tunnel up into the creek bank.

“Beavers are notorious for leaving obvious signs of their presence,” he said.

So there was no need to trap the beaver. It was gone.

Now that Mayor Dugan knows how to spot signs of beavers – which incidentally can chew underwater without getting a mouthful of water — he will check the creek banks periodically. If signs reappear or a neighbor complains about water backing up, then Dugan will call Early back down to the south fork of Pine Creek.

“It’s solved,” said Dugan. “But if it pops up again, the solution is pretty easy, get a trapper down here.”

Dugan said the whole matter was a temporary fix, because silt has built up in the creek over the years, which may need to be excavated to prevent future flooding.

Royce Johnson, former Farmington mayor for 23 years, said the creek was dredged across the full length of town in the early ‘80s.

“I would suspect that unless we get some kind of a grant to dredge it again, I don’t think we’ll be able to do it,” Dugan said.