From Okanagan waterfront parks to creeks far inland, Kelowna city staff are protecting trees from beaver attack with wire fences that are, all too often, removed by humans.
Image Credit: Submitted/City of Kelowna
April 15, 2022 - 6:30 AM
Andrew Hunsberger loves the thousands of trees on City of Kelowna lands.
The city’s urban forestry supervisor, however, is frustrated by the ongoing battle not only against beavers attacking the trees but the humans who aid and abet them.
“They’re everywhere, from most of our waterfront parks, all along Mill Creek, all our wetlands,” Hunsberger told iNFOnews.ca. “We wrap tens of thousands of trees with beaver wire to try to help us with that but, there are people that go and pull all the wire down.”
That can lead to major damage as beavers can decimate a forested area very quickly.
“Beavers cause a lot of tree damage for us and lot of work,” Hunsberger said. ”It’s really disheartening when you finally get an area re-treed and naturalized and you come out and most of the trees in the area are either on the ground or ready to hit the ground and you’ve got to cut them down because they’re dangerous. It’s super frustrating.”
Behind the wire mesh in an example of the damage beavers can do even to large trees.
Image Credit: Submitted/City of Kelowna
To try to combat the human element of the problem, Hunsberger has launched a pilot program used by some other communities.
Trees are painted with latex paint mixed with sand. It can be colored to match the tree species so isn’t anywhere as noticeable as the wire mesh.
The beavers don’t like the sand in the paint on their teeth so, the theory is, they will leave those trees alone.
“That’s supposed to discourage beaver from chewing, especially in those areas where people are pulling all the wire off,” Hunsberger said.
READ MORE: Beavers move into small Okanagan community, cause trouble
Removing the wire is actually considered vandalism and subject to fines of up to $10,000.
Protective measures are not always easy to install.
Image Credit: Submitted/City of Kelowna
It’s not just humans that are messing with the mesh.
“Beavers will actually lift the wire,” he said. “The wire isn’t actually fixed to the tree, normally, so we’ll come back and you can see where they lifted it and chewed under the wire.”
That’s happened at Munson Pond with the beaver likely travelling along irrigation ditches from Mission Creek to the pond on the north side of KLO Road.
Beavers are spread throughout the city, along Mill, Mission and Brandt’s creeks, to wetlands such as Munson Pond, Chichester Pond and Rotary Marsh.
It’s not impossible for beavers to dam creeks the size of Mission Creek, Hunsberger said, although such structures would likely be wiped out during the spring freshet each year.
The city has two employees who work full time patrolling parks, creeks and wetlands removing debris, much of it due to beavers.
“They spend a lot of their time pulling out beaver dams in our creeks,” Hunsberger said. “It’s a brutal job. A lot of it is guys in waders in creeks pulling wood out, year round.”
Anyone seeing humans removing anti-beaver wires is asked to report it to the city’s bylaw department at 250-469-8686.
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