Plenty of snow this past week. Instead of snowshoes, I decided to take the Drone out scouting the Beaver Dams on the creek. I've mentioned them before, but never had any decent pics.
Here's what the "healthy" part of the creek looks like below the Dams, and what the rest of it used to look like. It's a large enough creek to be "named", and has water flowing all year. You can see the two lane road at top right for scale.
Here you can see two of the dams, the largest near the bottom where it splits the creek over to the right, and where it's flooded ATV trail and large part of the area there. It's hard to see how much is flooded, because half is still frozen and covered with snow.
Here's a closer view, and look at all the downed trees they've piled up not just on the dam itself, but all across the center.
Becoming quite the mess.
This is the main dam, you can see how it/they have changed the course of the stream, way over to the right, that used to be an ATV trail, now flooded over.
Here's a higher level view. If you look farther upstream you can see they've moved up and are in the process of building another one about a hundred yards or so upstream.
Not only have they destroyed dozens, if not hundreds of trees now, this stagnant water will become a nasty breeding ground for mosquitos and such come spring/summer.
Well enough is enough, I'll be blowing these dams out with some tannerite as soon as the ground thaws a bit more, and see if we can't restore the creek ecosystem. After all, if the Beavers really want a pond, there's a very large one just a few hundred yards upstream. There is a trapping season for Beaver here that runs to the end of the month, but I'm not a fan of trapping. To me that's just cruel to them. These may however, get relocated to heaven (if you believe in that sort of thing) via alternate methods.
Check out the video flyover link below. No sound because it's quiet winter time :) (or maybe I was just lazy today). Aren't these drones just the handiest things ever?
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