Hidden deep in the green of Magnuson Park.
The work of engineers.
Tiny furry ones.
This is the main beaver pond.
This is where the beavers live.
Nature's construction crew hard at work in Seattle City Parks.
And tonight.
Wow. We'll see.
We might be able to see a little better.
Elyssa Kerr of the nonprofit Beavers Northwest is on the lookout for them.
Their lodge is just around the corner and across the pond.
Through all of these sticks, if we had X-ray vision right across that way.
Magnuson Park has long been home to urban beavers landscape architects
shaping this pond to their liking.
The signs are everywhere.
So this is the perfect example of a beaver chewed tree.
They've chewed
all the bark off of the base of this tree and have started to chew into it.
You can really tell it's beavers because of these awesome teeth marks
that are in here.
They do that for a number of reasons to eat the sugary cambium layer
under the bark and to gather building material for dams and lodges.
But it's not just their construction that shapes the landscape.
Their destruction encourages more growth, too, like on the stump of these willows.
And if I feel it, I can feel all those beaver teeth marks.
It's kind of got this sharp, pointy feel that beaver chew sticks have.
And after it was chewed, it sent up new sprouts.
And you'll see that happening over and over and over again.
Beavers can continue to harvest and eat from them and build from them.
And yet we still have this amazing growth.
There are other benefits as well.
Beavers slow the flow of water to form wetlands, creating habitat
for animals ranging from deer to weasels to insects and birds.
Those wetlands can also improve water quality by slowing it
down on the landscape. In 2020 and 2021.
Beavers Northwest conducted a survey with a King County Water
Works grant in partnership with Seattle Parks and Recreation and found
13 active beaver colonies on Seattle Parks land.
But like any roommate, coexisting takes work.
They also start to flood our trails.
Beavers Industrious efforts can lead to expanding ponds and trails that don't
drain properly if left alone, which is what brings beavers northwest here.
They maintain a complicated relationship with their namesake animal,
partially
foiling their efforts with limiting devices to let water through dams.
They've been managing them here since 2013.
Everything I do is trying to help people and beavers compromise.
We want to keep beavers where they're at and let them keep doing
what they're doing, but also make sure that, you know,
people infrastructure is still accessible and usable.
But those installations are tough to see here through the summer
vegetation, just like the beavers themselves.
Yeah.
So that could be one full size.
So a few miles away in Kirkland.
We're just putting apart the fence panels.
Right now,
we can get a better look at work underway on one of those limiting devices.
Forbes Lake is surrounded by homes close to the water.
And beavers living here have been a bit too successful in their dam building,
raising the water level.
This is a notch exclusion fence, which is a method
of keeping beavers away from a notch in the dam.
So allowing water to flow through the dam at a level that we determine
and prevent flooding.
For years, the homeowner has been doing battle,
tearing down what the beavers build up.
The goal here is to reduce that maintenance
so that the beavers can be good neighbors to.
The alternative to this type of device is that
beavers would be completely removed from the system, so they would
not be able to be here or do
their work, have babies continue to spread out on the landscape.
So by installing a device like this, we're helping these landowners live
with these beavers and kind of compromise with them.
We want these benefits that beavers provide
by building dams, creating wetlands.
But we don't want,
you know, the flooding of infrastructure, and particularly in this case, you know,
septic systems
like we don't want that being flooded and then causing water quality problems.
This mirrors how water at Magnuson Park is managed with a similar device
called a pond leveler,
which is basically a hidden drain that the beavers can't close off.
Beavers Northwest helps the city manage several sites
with urban beavers like Longfellow Creek and Meadowbrook Pond.
I was just wondering if I heard somebody chewing.
Back at Magnuson Park.
I think I'm just wishful thinking.
The Twilight Hunt for these critters continues.
Yeah.
So I'm really looking for like a floating head.
Beavers really just cruise across the water.
This is their active time
when you're most likely to spot them right as the sun sets.
They get to work.
So silly with that big stick.
And sure enough, here they are with mouths full, changing the landscape
one branch at a time.
They belong here.
And really, when we restore these areas, I think one of the great stories
at Magnuson Park is that, you know, this park used to be a naval air base
and then these wetlands were restored in 2010s.
So fairly recently, this is a pretty recent wetland system we have here.
They dug all these ponds.
They planted tens of thousands of willows
and beavers, moved in pretty immediately and said, wow, thank you so much.
This is wonderful.
And now they're here with the ecological benefits
they bring from water quality to climate resilience.
A little dive.
And the added benefit of knowing these incredible creatures call Seattle home.
Just like us. It's really special.
I think.
It's just there's such a funny little animals and big animals,
and it's just neat to
see them doing what they do and being so successful at it.
I didn't have to work very hard to get here.
You know, I pretty much drove here and parked
my car, walked 20 feet, and here we are and we've got beavers.
And that's amazing.