The Beaver's are Winning

For those of you who don't know, I currently work for a non-profit conservation organization. I am more or less the maintenance crew for the grounds. Yes, the whole crew. Anyway, a major part of the property that I have to work on is a network of beaver ponds. We use these ponds on a regular basis in educational programs. However, until last year, there weren't actually any beavers living there anymore.

Well the beavers are there now, and they're doing some redecorating. They've been repairing all the dams, and building some new ones. This would be fantastic as it allows us to have some actual signs of beaver activity to show in educational programs. It would be, if it weren't for the fact that one of the dams is causing their pond to overflow...onto the logging road I use to access a good chunk of the property. So every morning I have to go and punch a whole in the dam. This keeps the water level below the road level.

This was working for about the past two weeks. But there was a huge rainstorm the othernight and now the damn beavers are winning. Now I have to go and practically perforate the entire dam every morning. Even so, when i show up the next morning, the water is already spilling out onto the logging road. It's a pain in my ass. Eventually I'll hopefully manage to put enough holes in the dam that it will take them most of the night to repair. This is rather tricky at the moment as the water flow rate in the streams feeding the pond network is such that the pond refills or drains (depending on the dam state) in only a couple hours. It's definately time for my boss to consider some more permanent solution, and no I don't mean killing the beavers. Give me a little more credit than that please.

What in the world can that be?

It's a Blog. Yes, I've finally jumped on the bandwagon. More to come.