It’s not every day that a volunteer-led project helps beavers and humans both, but the volunteers at Friends of Fish Creek are doing exactly that. Volunteers are spending the weekend installing pond levelers in Bebo Park and Sikome Lake at recurring beaver-related flood risk locations. “(A pond lever) is essentially a really long pipe. It has a cage at one end, so the beavers can’t get in there and jam it up and gum it up and dam it. And we set it through the pipe so that the water level can be regulated,” explained project lead Himanshu Sangale. The pipe is put through a portion of the beaver dam, keeping the dam intact but also allowing water to flow through when necessary. For Bebo Park, it’s been causing parts of the pathway to be flooding, and at times it’s made the pathway inaccessible. “What’s been happening is there’s been a lot of flooding whenever the rain comes in, whenever there’s a lot of moisture in this wetland that we have here, the water has nowhere to go and it goes on to the trail. That causes unsafe conditions over the freeze-thaw cycles of the winter seasons that we have here in Calgary, it really causes a lot of damage,” Sangale said. “Our main motivation is to coexist with the beavers, allow them to have their pond, but not allow it to get so dammed up and deep that it floods the park infrastructure,” added restoration team lead Ross Anderson with Friends of Fish Creek. It’s literal dirty work, with the volunteers having to go waist deep in the muddy waters to set up the pipe, while also laying sandbags, shoveling mud, and removing heavy debris like logs and rocks. For some, it may not sound like the best way to spend a weekend, but the volunteers say they love being part of the park improvement efforts. “I spent my whole life kind of being in the park. I used to come down here with my parents when I was younger and walk through the park, and then I’ve been doing a lot of mountain biking and stuff like that in the past. So I do care a lot about the park, and I think it’s a great way to coexist with the beavers,” Anderson said. “Beavers are a great species to help out. And by helping them, we help others, both the humans that use the park and the wildlife that use the park as well,” Sangale said. The project received a $5,000 Ocean Action Grant from Ocean Wise. This grant supports youth-led environmental projects across Canada and is funded by Canada Service Corps. Sangale explained the materials cost between $2,000 and $3,000, with the rest of the funds used for things like other protection work in the area. “That’s going to involve finding some old growth trees that are around this area, and also trees that have the potential to fall or be cut down by beavers onto some infrastructure,” Sangale explained. Saturday was spent at Bebo Park, and work will take place at Sikome Lake on Sunday.
