Tearing down a Beaver Dam
Tearing down a beaver dam can be quite a difficult task, very labor intensive!
Often times these dams are put together with sticks and mud in such a way that it would be nearly impossible to destroy the dam with anything but a machine or explosives. Dangers come with both and every option should be thought thru entirely before attempting such a task. Lest start with a little history to why beavers build dams in the first place, then we can go a little further into what is involved in tearing a beaver dam down in the correct manner. Click on our additional pages to find more information on beaver trapping in our beaver section of this website. We have alot of beaver photos that you can find here!
Why do beavers build dams anyways?
Beavers will build dams in order to make them a new “pond”. Beavers can make several different places to live in one stream. Often times you will see a hut or large stick covered mound in or near the water around the dam. This is where the beavers live. I will post a photo of a general layout of a beaver”pond”. This is not meant to be a exact replication of your situation, but a general design to the way beavers construct their living habitat about 90 percent of the time. A Beavers three purposes of existence is to flood property, make wetlands and store food. Everything that a beaver does revolves around these three items. The first thing that a beaver will do when it finds a new area that it feels suitable would make a great place to live, is flood the place. This gives the beaver a nice deep “pond” that it can start to make the other things needed to survive, a hut and food cache. A homeowner will start to notice smaller trees disappearing from their property, often times finding them laying in the stream bed as a foundation for a beaver dam. These are often time expensive trees such as Bradford Pear, Japanese Maple trees and other exotic trees that homeowners love to have on their property.
Some of the tools you will need.
If money is no object, I would say that you need to go down to the rental store and get a John Deere Backhoe for a day, But there is many dangers with that, Once you let the water “loose” it’s going to flood everything, So you have to make sure you are positioned correctly before you let the water go, often times its not possible to get a backhoe in to where the beaver dam is, this is where the hand tools of days ago come in. shovel, pick, axe and a lot of hard work and sweat. You see when beavers build dams. They build them so they don’t come apart. They cross weave the sticks and then pack the entire layer with mud. They then come add another layer of sticks and another layer of mud. The beavers will repeat this process until the water level is suitable to support their needs. If a dam is not removed the beavers will continue to do “upkeep “on the dam and ultimately make it bigger. The larger the dam, the more difficult it will be to remove. Good luck in your quest to remove your beaver dam, should you need assistance we have a list of qualified companies that perform this labor intensive task. You can find the companies on our wildlife removal experts page. We also have some cool photos of beaver dams, beaver huts and other beaver related media in our beaver photos page