Zac Ziegler

Hey, how's it going?

Yeah, so this is in an area called the Bald Hill Natural Area.

There's a popular multi-use path there that, you know, starting in 2023, there had been some issues with a little flooding because some beavers had decided to move in on a creek.

And, well, that led some nonprofits and local governments to search for a way to get a little coexistence between the two.

So the solution was what's called a notch exclusion fence.

And it seems like such a simple solution that it's kind of amazing.

It hadn't been tried here in the beaver state before this.

All that they really did was cut a little hole, like a notch in the beaver dam and put a fence around it.

And they cut that notch deep enough to where it got things to the level that they wanted.

So this nice, easily accessed path wouldn't flood.

So this is going to be a pretty long-term solution.

The fencing that is put around it, it's like chain link or chicken wire.

And it does a pretty good job of, you know, letting anything like a small aquatic life that lives in the creek that this is on, let it pass through while the beavers seem to not be trying to build around it.

They seem to be just kind of accepting its presence there and rolling with it.

Yeah.

So it's a really lovely area, you know, as you would expect in a natural use area.

And as you would expect in Oregon, in the Willamette Valley, it's very green.

I got to see ducks and some salamanders and some other birds and just a variety of wildlife.

that had moved in is really nice, really just kind of a lush green area that now has this almost marshy habitat that is really healthy for the area.

Yeah, once the beavers had built the habitat, we now saw, you know, ducks moving into the area and other things.