The Strathcona Regional District (SRD) Board awarded Rewilding Water & Earth Inc. the contract to manage a Beaver Coexistence Project on Cortes and Quadra Islands. 

The first phase is purely informational. 

“Beavers are the ultimate wetland managers, and they’re on it all the time. They’re checking their dams every day. For us humans to be able to not only co exist, but partner with wildlife like beaver will be a huge benefit to us as we see the climate changing and as we’re trying to adapt to and be more resilient to climate change,” explained Miranda Cross of Rewilding Water and Earth. 

There has been an ongoing human/beaver conflict at the beaver maintained wetland near the entrance to Kw’as Park, on Quais Bay Road, Cortes Island. 

MC: “The beavers continue to block the culvert that goes under Quais Bay Road. It carries water from the wetland to the lake. When beavers block that culvert, the road ends up being flooded. That’s a risk to the residents there, it blocks their egress and impacts their safety. Also, that road  is one of the main water supplies for the fire department. If that road was to wash out or become flooded, the fire department wouldn’t have one of their main supply intakes available in the event of an emergency. When that culvert gets blocked, the highways department comes with some equipment and removes the debris.” 

“This is an ongoing cycle. Every time the beavers build a dam and they’re blocking the culvert, they use what’s available: sticks and  deep, dark, rich, organic wetland soil, which we know is full of nutrients, including phosphorus, which contributes to algal blooms. Every time the culvert is unplugged, a flush of sediments is released toward the lake. There’s nothing else in between the lake and that culvert. It just goes straight into the lake.” 

“I’m interested  in this site particularly  because of my involvement in the Dillon Creek wetland project, which was implemented to mitigate nutrient inputs into the lake that were causing algal blooms.”

“We’ve identified this as a point source of nutrients, and there are some really low tech, low cost solutions available to us in terms of beaver coexistence. Pond levellers that can help regulate the height of the dams and exclusion fencing to keep the culverts from being blocked.”

Click here to see picture of these Beaver coexistence tools in operation. 

“I was just at a ‘Working with Beavers’ symposium in Edmonton, where they’re spearheading these kinds of projects in Canada. We had the opportunity to go visit Elk Island National Park where they have something like 400 active  beaver lodges, a ton of beaver activity, and they have road networks and culverts. So we got to visit some of the culverts they’re using these techniques on.” 

“Nothing is 100% maintenance free, but there’s a growing body of research and evidence to show that there’s dramatic cost savings once these techniques are used. A few times a year, one person on foot  can  take pictures and make sure it’s functioning. They might have to move a couple sticks, but it’s a lot less maintenance and so savings for taxpayers, as well as increased safety and lower risk for flooding and for road washouts.” 

“I’ve never actually installed one of these structures, so part of the project is to bring a beaver coexistence specialist, who’s an expert in these strategies, to Cortes to provide us with some guidance and recommendations.”

This project is one of the smaller components of a $1.1 million Disaster Risk Reduction/Climate Adaptation grant awarded to the SRD.

$85,163.90 is to be used for developing a story map for the Salmon River Floodplain, in Sayward, and Beaver Coexistence workshops on Cortes and Quadra Islands.

The larger components consist of: 

• $292,296.00 for the Homalco First Nation’s Xwémalhkwu Watershed Restoration Project. 
• $295,234.50 for the Ka:’yu:’k’t’h’/Che:k’tles7et’h’ First Nations Houpsitas Watershed Restoration Project. 
• $327,350.09 for the Nuchatlaht First Nation’s Nootka Island Ecological Restoration Strategy. 

At their Wednesday, July 19 meeting, the SRD Board decided to immediately put the smaller projects into motion. 

Strathcona Regional District (SRD) Protective Services Coordinator Shaun Koopman recommended that the Board hire Northwest Hydraulics Consultants to develop the Salmon River Floodplain Story map and Miranda Cross as manager of the Beaver Coexistence Program. 

In regard to Cross, he said, “For the Beaver Coexistence Project, we are recommending a direct award to Rewilding Water and Earth as they have previously worked with our park staff on this drainage issue on Cortes Island. Their project manager is also a local, so we strongly believe that if we went out to tender for this, that organization is already in the best position, knowing the beaver coexistence experts in the industry anyway, to undertake this work.”

Regional Directors Robyn Mawhinney and Mark Vonesch moved that “Rewilding Water & Earth Inc. be awarded the contract to manage the Beaver Coexistence Project.” This motion was carried with no opposing votes. 

(The Board also awarded the Salmon River story map contract to  Northwest Hydraulics Consultants.)

Koopman emailed Cortes Currents a detailed list of activities to be undertaken: 

• “Field work and meetings to design Beaver Coexistence strategies/prescriptions and recommendations and plan workshop field trips
• Benefits of Beaver for Disaster Risk Reduction-Climate Adaptation Public Workshops
• Benefits of Beaver for Disaster Risk Reduction-Climate Adaptation Transferable Knowledge Internal Session at Kw’as Road culvert with Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, SRD, consultants, and affected neighbouring private landowners.
• First Nations Elders Tour/consultation (Cortes) 
• Beaver Coexistence for Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change adaptation and resilience case study report, Project Overview and Environmental Management Plan Report, including Beaver Coexistence Prescriptions for Kw’as Park/Road. Design and Recommendations: Report to provide transferable knowledge and reports will be made available to the public on SRD website.” 

Cross subsequently informed Cortes Currents about Dr Emily Fairfax’s findings that beaver maintained wetlands reduce the impacts of megafires. 

“She’s found that where there’s active beaver dams on the landscape,  there’s just less impact from the fire. The riparian vegetation grows back right away. It’s not all burnt and singed and scorched to bare earth.  It’s a refuge for wildlife and for vegetation, and even some structures like a cabin that was nearby survived  this crazy megafire when everything that was in the dry area  was just totally scorched.”

“Wetlands in the landscape function to mitigate risks from flooding,  clean water, and they capture and sequester carbon. They mitigate the high intensity precipitation events we’re seeing, and runoff  erosion, as well as store water in the landscape for the dry time of year, mitigating droughts and heat domes and the impacts from wildfires.” 

Cross mentioned two ways to restore wetlands.

“We can hire consultants like myself, or engineers, but it costs a lot to have humans build wetlands. Beavers are the ultimate wetland managers and they do this work for free.

Top photo credit: Beaver at work Photo by Derek Otway on Unsplash 

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