Somewhere in a drainage culvert near you, a furry, industrious critter may be at work.

Water is rushing over the corrugated metal. The compulsion is overwhelming. He must stop it.

Michael O’Leary / The Herald Members of the Washington Conservation Corps and Snohomish County Public Works interns work to breach a beaver dam and install a plastic pipe to maintain the water level behind the dam and flow in Star Creek.

The beaver is good at stopping running water. So good, in fact, that Snohomish County Surface Water Management has diverted watershed steward Jake Jacobson, a fish biologist, to spend some of his time dealing with busy beavers.

The problem has gnawed at Jacobson for several years. Throughout the county, Jacobson has responded to increasing calls about beavers damming culverts, backing up streams and drainage ditches and flooding driveways and roads.

Sometimes, when the problem has persisted, the beaver-related floods have washed out roads and rendered septic tanks useless.

In response, Jacobson has tried, rejected and refined many tactics. Trapping, which often results in death, and killing beavers has been restricted in recent years and often is only a temporary solution because new beavers move in. Removing the dam requires constant vigilance and a much bigger annual budget than the $9,000 Jacobson has.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Beavers’ extensive dam-building skills force water managers to be creative to avoid flooding.

He is now monitoring 85 sites and adding about 15 more each year.

Jacobson’s strategy is evolving. Instead of fighting the beavers, he’s trying to learn how to live with them.

How? By lowering the water in beaver ponds, not just draining them.

“We’re trying to talk them into accepting a 2-foot deep pond instead of a 3-foot deep pond,” Jacobson said.

Homes flooded

Robert Wheeler knows firsthand the problems beavers can cause homeowners.

“I’ve fought them for 14 years,” Wheeler said. “I’m 74 now, with an artificial knee. They’ve bested me.”

His Lakewood-area home sits next to the West Fork Quilceda Creek. Beavers plugging nearby culverts and streams have turned much of his property into a pond after rainy spells in the winter.

“It’s flooded us out about nine or 10 times over 14 years,” Wheeler said. “We’ve had water completely under the house and around it.”

Wheeler has had to have his septic tank pumped after such floods five or six times since living there, he said.

To fight back, Wheeler has used a shovel and other tools to dig and claw out the dams.

“Well, two days later, it’s built back up. They work overtime, all the time.”

Landowners such as Wheeler complain that the county seems indifferent if a dam doesn’t threaten county property.

Jacobson acknowledged the criticism. He has to concentrate his efforts on roads and bridges to maximize his $9,000 annual budget and part-time commitment, he said. Losing a road or bridge would affect many more than just individual homeowners.

Nonetheless, Jacobson does have advice for individual property owners. He informs them about trapping laws and gives away plans of how to build water control devices in the dams that reduce flooding.

Beaver deceivers

Controlling the level of a beaver pond is tricky business. The beavers have their own ideas.

Jacobson has tried a few tricks. Most involve deceiving the beavers into building their dams farther from culverts or poking culvert-sized pipes through the dam to lower the pond.

Beavers have foiled some of them, plugging the pipes or building the dams higher and wider.

Jacobson has settled on a “flexible leveler.” Flexible 18-inch diameter perforated pipe is stuck through a dam, with the ends sticking out 3 feet on either side of the dam and large wire guards to prevent plugging.

The dam will still back up water, but the pipe allows more through, lowering the pond level.

So far, they seem to be working – except sometimes the beavers decide to build a new dam downstream.

“The water level control strategy is in its infancy,” Jacobson said.

No leg traps, more beavers

Wildlife managers are responding to more such conflicts between landowners and beavers in the past several years as beaver populations have increased.

Wildlife managers attribute the increase mainly to the law prohibiting leg traps.

Beavers had once been threatened with extinction because of hunting. Trapping was banned in 1909 and only resumed in this state in 1963, Sean Carrell, the statewide problem wildlife coordinator for the Department of Fish and Wildlife, said via e-mail.

By then, state wildlife managers figured populations had rebounded enough to allow trapping again.

In 2000, voters in Washington state passed Initiative 713, which prohibited using leg traps to control animals.

The state does not have exact population counts, Carrell said. Wildlife managers suspect that the new law has led to a population increase.

The past three years, a little more than 1,000 beavers have been trapped statewide on average, according to the state Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Web site, www.wdfw.org. That’s down from a pre-I-713 annual average of 5,289 during the 1990s.

Jacobson added that trappers have told him low prices for pelts in the past several years also contributed.

The human population has boomed, too, leading to more conflicts, Carrell said.

While the problem is primarily rural, cities are hardly immune. Some have caused problems near Everett Mall, Jacobson said. The city of Lynnwood has hired him to deal with beavers. Beavers have plugged up a roadside ditch near Embassy Suites on 44th Avenue, he said.

“The beavers are 2,000 feet away, right in the heart of Lynnwood,” Jacobson said.

He is hoping the decreased hunting pressures on beavers will slow down their reproductive rates, as some studies suggest.

“I’m not sure what the long-term solution is,” Jacobson said. “I really don’t know. We may have to go back to nuisance trapping, but that’s not what I would recommend.”

He’s hoping tinkering with water levels will appease the beavers and landowners.

“I’m not sure if I’m going to be successful,” Jacobson said.

Reporter Scott Morris: 425-339-3292 or smorris@heraldnet.com.

Beaver biology

Size: 40 pounds, 3 feet long, including tail

Food: Bark, plants

Life span: Five to 10 years

Family life: Mated pair stays together for years, sometimes for life.

Litter size: One to eight kits, averaging four, depending on the amount of food available and the female’s age.

Sleep: Mostly during the day, less active in winter but do not hibernate.

Colony size: Two to 12, sometimes including kits from previous years.

Density: Populations are limited by habitat availability, but generally won’t exceed one colony per half-mile.

Source: Washington state Department of Fish and WildlifeIf beavers move in

Snohomish County has only budgeted money to protect roads and bridges, not individual property owners.

Residents can still contact Jake Jacobson of Snohomish County Surface Water Management for advice or plans for water control devices at 425-388-6428 or jake.jacobson@ co.snohomish.wa.us.

Information about how to control beaver pond levels can be found at Beavers WW.org.

For information about beaver biology or how to legally trap beavers, go to wdfw.wa.gov and type “beavers” into the site’s search feature.