Our Dam Story
Photo from Voices of the Oldman, a docuseries by Next Bend.
Our dam story
Because someone had to own that pun.
It started with a dam that didn't exist.
In 2019, Starland County started a beaver coexistence project. Then a major flood swept through the creek and left them with a new dam problem: no beavers, no dam, a nearly finished beaver boardwalk and a grand opening on the calendar. So we built them a dam. A Living Riparian Fence, officially. Really a beaver dam analogue: posts, willow, sod and some stones, set into the creek by a team of beaver buddies led by You Betula. The water slowed, the willow took, and eventually the beavers showed up and finished the job. Leave it to beavers, with a bit of help from one of Canada's only beaver-focused consultancies.
That is still how we work. Figure out what the beaver is trying to do, then build the thing that lets it happen without flooding your road or eating your orchard. Since then: rural municipalities, cities, First Nations, ranches and industrial land managers, from a home base in Lethbridge to the far side of the country.
Canada's past was built on the backs of beavers. Our future will be built alongside them.
Why a gift shop?
Somewhere along the way we became curators of beaver gifts and gear. Every coexistence job, conference booth and classroom visit turned up another good beaver book, a clever piece of art or a pair of socks we couldn't leave behind, so The Beaver Cache is where we put the best of them, alongside pieces the beavers made themselves.
The shop has a second job. We wanted a fund that pays for beaver coexistence work: free tours and education, and help for landowners and communities who can't quite afford a project. But You Betula is a business, not a charity or a not-for-profit, so many of the grants that fund this kind of work aren't open to us. The Beaver Cache fills that gap: half of the net profit from every sale goes into the coexistence fund.
Betula is the birch genus. Beavers rate it highly. The rest of the name you can work out yourself.
Four rules. We don't break them.
- Work with the animal. Every design starts with what the beaver is trying to do where they live. Fight that and you lose.
- No lethal control. We do whatever we can to avoid killing the animal. If a site can't be solved by coexistence, we say so.
- Real numbers. We measure before and after, we publish what we learn, and we learn from our work.
- Say what it costs. Written plans with the price on them. No proposals that need a translator.
Meet the Beaver Guy
Kirby England, in the riverbottom. From Voices of the Oldman. Photo by Next Bend.
Kirby England, Founder, President and Principal Wetland Ecologist
Kirby has liked beavers since before it was a job. He is a registered Professional Biologist and an Authenticating Wetland Professional, and he has worked with beavers professionally since 2014. Kirby also teaches environmental science at Lethbridge Polytechnic.
Ask him why he actually likes beavers and you'll get a twenty-minute answer about water storage, drought and fish. The short version: they do for free what we spend millions trying to engineer.
“Say Beaver on 3!”
House rule: every site visit ends with a selfie. The beavers decline. The crew usually doesn't. Seven years of them, and counting.
Got a beaver situation of your own? Book a free 15-minute consult on youbetula.com.
Take Carex, and thank you for helping us build habitats for life!