Influx of beavers leaves suburbanites up a flooded creek
Dams flood property and require permit, trapper to remove
A little over a week ago, Donna M. Lukowski noticed something strange about the creek that normally babbles along the property line of her house in Lancaster. It was still. And it was flooding.
Lukowski, who grew up in her house, is used to the creek flooding, which she attributes to the development of the property. But the creek always had kept flowing in the past.
She began to investigate and discovered, much to her surprise, large branches intertwined with little twigs in a pile at least three feet high all the way across the creek, blocking most of the water and allowing just a trickle to get through.
The culprit: the North American beaver.
Actually, at least five of the squatty, buck-toothed creatures known — and often reviled — for their architectural talents.
“I’ve lived here my whole life,” said Lukowski, 44, a supervisor for Dunlop Tires. “We’ve never had them here. . . . Now, all of a sudden, they’re moving in.”
Beavers have long called Western New York home, but recently, as more land is developed, people have begun noticing the critters and their handiwork in unexpected places.
“Beavers have been a nuisance in Erie County for quite a long time,” said Mark Kandel, regional wildlife manager for the state Department of Environmental Conservation. “It’s not uncommon.
“Their density is increasing in Western New York,” Kandel said. “Part of that is due to suppressed fur prices over the last few years. If there’s a market for fur trappers, they put more effort into trapping. But we went through a lot of years where the price hasn’t been attractive enough. The beaver population, in turn, expands.”
Beavers can turn up just about “anywhere where you have water and available trees,” Kandel said.
“You see more in southern Erie County and then into the Southern Tier,” he said.
But beavers tend to get a lot more notice in residential areas, where their dam work can cause serious flooding.
In November, Orchard Park officials grappled with a den of beavers that had dammed a creek in Birdsong Park, flooding the nature trail there.
And in 2006, Elma installed a baffle at a 40-foot beaver dam blocking water culverts to Route 400 off West Blood Road. It created a 100-acre lake and flooded basements and backyards.
In Lancaster, Lukowski said she has counted eight dams along Slate Bottom Creek, which winds past her house and through the town.
When she was growing up, Lukowski said, there was a section of the creek that people referred to as “The Beaver Dam,” because of all the beavers in the area. But back then, there were no homes there.
“If they flooded that part, it didn’t matter because nothing was back there,” she said.
But Lukowski said she’s noticed more and more wildlife making its way into the residential areas.
“Deer will hop right in,” she said. “They’ve got no place to go.”
She said she has seen the beavers around her property, and even watched one nudge a big branch toward the water with its nose. She snapped photos of one she swears weighed at least 50 pounds.
“I thought it was a bear,” she said.
Eager as a . . . er . . . beaver to get rid of the dam and the beavers, she called the DEC to request removal of the dam and perhaps even the animals.
Lukowski learned that, while the DEC would give her a permit to remove the dam, she would have to do it herself or pay for someone to do it. The same went for removing the beavers.
Because it’s not trapping season, Lukowski would need to find a trapper with a special permit to get the animals for her.
She took her case to the Town Board recently and demanded action.
Town Supervisor Robert H. Giza said the town is going to hire a trapper who already has the special permit to help Lukowski out.
In the meantime, Lukowski is going to try to dismantle the beaver dam in her creek on her own. After receiving her permit to remove the dam, she began hacking at it with a hoe and was able to break up part of it. The stench of stagnant water filled the air as murky water crushed through the hole.
“Even if I get mine out of here,” she said, “there’s still going to be issues.”
mbecker@buffnews.com ">email: mbecker@buffnews.com
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