Over the 10 years since Beavers Northwest was founded, our organization has provided technical assistance to land owners and land managers who want to coexist with beavers throughout the Puget Sound region. Our work includes installing beaver coexistence devices such as culvert exclusion fences and pond levelers which help to create a compromise between beaver habitat needs and human infrastructure impacts. These devices allow us to manage beavers in place and retain the many benefits that beaver-created wetlands provide to our ecosystems while reducing flooding or infrastructure blockages. Because these coexistence devices are installed in living ecosystems, they often require monitoring and maintenance as well as adaptive management to continue to function. In the past, we have left this monitoring and maintenance to landowners. As such, we don’t always get a sense for device efficacy over time. Furthermore, since 2021, our team has been implementing a novel beaver management device known as a notch exclusion fence. The iterative development of these devices has included much trial and error. Our team would like to make a coordinated effort to assess the efficacy of these novel notch exclusion fences as compared to other types of coexistence devices that we have installed in the past. Our process would include an assessment of devices previously installed by Beavers Northwest, monitoring of existing installations and adaptive management strategies, and installation of new devices with increased monitoring of pre- and post-install conditions.
We hope to identify metrics such as success rates of the various coexistence techniques and adaptive management strategies as well as efficacy rates for reducing the identified beaver conflicts. Monitoring of previously installed devices may include site visits and landowner surveys. Monitoring of new installs may include wildlife camera review and water level monitoring. This data will be useful for communicating with landowners and land managers about the effectiveness of coexistence devices when reviewing beaver management options. It will also help us to inform regulators such as the Department of Fish and Wildlife about the relative effectiveness of the different coexistence devices. ($20,000)