Poor academic performance aside, one Centralia College attendee has been causing grief for the school’s neighbors.
It’s a beaver. The creature has built its dam where China Creek runs through campus. With the rodent’s residence backing up water, businesses and homes in the area see an increased risk of flooding. However, trapping the beaver is a temporary solution, according to Luc Lamarche, of Centralia, owner of Beaver Craftworks.
“Some local beaver is going to notice, ‘Hey those digs are better than my digs. I’m going to move over there,’” Lamarche said. “It creates this black hole … (for the) landowner or the county or the public works department.”
Plus, Lamarche said, with Centralia in the flat, lush valley of the Chehalis River and its tributaries, “this whole area is beaver heaven.” Moving the creature simply makes it some other landowner’s problem.
Beavers are a keystone species, meaning they play an integral role in a healthy watershed. Lamarche’s business aims to create “beaver coexistence”: preventing flooding while letting the beaver stay in its chosen spot.
“Neighbors had voiced concerns like, ‘Well what’s up with this extra water?’ The college cares about that,” Lamarche said. “They’re excited to have a beaver, but they want to be good neighbors. And good fences make good neighbors, just like good boundaries make good relationships. … Anyone who’s married will understand that.”
This week, he installed one of a few coexistence contraptions at the Centralia College site. It’s called a pond leveler, which essentially runs a pipe through the dam so water continues to flow. The beaver will patch the holes from the pipe on its own. As the dam is built, more water will flow through the pipe.
The contraption also ensures the water level stays high enough for the beaver to swim down to their dam’s entryway, which protects them from predators.
Among other beaver coexistence devices Lamarche makes are culvert fences, as drainage pipes under roadways are destination getaways for beavers.
Living in Centralia since 2007, Lamarche studied as a civil engineer. Living in the rural area, he fell in love with nature.
“I started learning about beaver’s history and had this ‘Aha!’ moment,” he said. “(Beavers are) the animal kingdom’s civil engineer.”
He began learning more about North America’s largest rodent through classes and, in 2021, founded Beaver Craftworks.
While the devices are an “upfront investment,” he said, they can save time and money accrued by the permitting process and the execution of beaver trapping. The work is founded on decades worth of research preceding his business, Lamarche said.
Every beaver presents new challenges, he said. There are beavers in Canada with dams that stretch for more than 1 kilometer, which Lamarche referred to as “beaver New York City.” As much water is held back above ground by one beaver dam, it’s estimated that two to five times as much is stored underground.
This groundwater can be beneficial to plants and other species in an ecosystem. Beavers essentially create new wetland habitat, which can be critical for many other species’ survival.
Lamarche recommends anyone who’s interested to go online and research “beaver coexistence.” Check out more about the business and its work on Instagram at “beavercraftworks,” or the website https://www.beavercraft.works/.
