Photo credit: Sally Thomson

Site Habitat Assessments

Wondering if your land has suitable habitat for beaver? Institute staff have twenty site assessments under their belt in areas ranging from desert to alpine. You might be surprised at the places that beaver can live, thrive and restore, without bulldozers and other expensive mechanical techniques. Like the severely eroded creek in the image to the left.

Costs are $300 for a 4-hour half day and $500 for anything in excess of 4 hours, plus travel expenses for staff. Contact us to discuss.

Beaver Management Plans

If you have beaver over wider areas - say a small town, or a state park - a beaver management plan allows you to customize management approaches that fit with the existing uses in the area, and live peacefully with the neighbors.

Cost varies widely depending on the size of the area and specific use conflicts you are dealing with. Contact us to discuss your needs.

Flow Device Construction

Most of the old-school beaver management tools such as ripping out dams and killing beaver are ineffective and temporary at best. Sometimes very temporary. Sometimes they make the situation worse. Always, they are expensive, time-consuming and frustrating.

But there are new-school tools and these include flow devices, which were invented by Skip Lisle. Flow devices use knowledge of beaver behavior to better manage them. Because, while beaver have big teeth, we humans have the big brains. These new-school techniques are less expensive and a lot less frustrating. There is one catch: they must be constructed correctly for each site and the specific conditions found there. Cookie cutter plans to build these things can fail and end up back where you started: frustrated.

The Institute builds a limited number of flow devices at appropriate sites. If you need more than one flow device, it may make sense to have a workshops, invite some neighbors or colleagues, and the flow device will be built as part of the workshop.

Costs per device vary depending on the access to the site, site conditions, and materials needed.

Again, contact us to discuss.

Live-trapping and Relocation

There are some states where this is possible. Permits are required and permission from the owners or managers of the relocation site. The circumstances are too variable to try to estimate prices in advance, but please feel free to contact us to discuss your needs.