Grants for Living with Beavers

As a “keystone species,” beavers provide vital habitat for many plants and animals, including threatened and endangered species. Beavers also offer wonderful wildlife watching opportunities.

This is a picture of a beaver lodge, which is where a beaver colony lives. The lodge provides shelter and protection from predators. The only way to enter the lodge is from beneath the water. Lodges may have two chambers, a living space and a space for drying off.

The New Hampshire Animal Rights League encourages individuals and organizations — as well as businesses and towns — experiencing problems with beavers to seek solutions for peaceful co-existence, rather than resorting to trapping.

Wildlife control operators hired to trap beavers are likely to assure a property owner that the animal will die instantly and “humanely.” This is disingenuous because there is no guarantee it will happen that way, and even in the best of circumstances death is not instant.

Living with beavers may require more up-front effort and expense than trapping, but a beaver management system is a long-term solution. Trapping only removes the current beavers. If the habitat is attractive, it’s likely another beaver family will move in. Removing adults also risks leaving dependent youngsters behind; young beavers stay with their parents for two years.

NHARL offers matching grants of up to $750 to individuals, organizations, businesses, and municipalities looking to install non-lethal solutions for managing beavers in New Hampshire. (For those in Massachusetts, the MSPCA offers funding for installing flow devices.)

To date, NHARL has awarded more than $6,000 in grants to individuals and organizations seeking peaceful co-existence with beavers.

There are a number of companies that can help you find a way to peacefully co-exist with beavers:

Be sure to talk to your installer about the importance of keeping the water level as high as possible. If the water level gets too low, beavers may panic and work harder to undo the installation. Maintaining high water also preserves the habitat for all the other animals (and plants) who have come to depend on it.

To apply for a grant, click below. Applications can be submitted any time of year.

Apply for a Grant for Living with Beavers
Skip Lisle of Beaver Deceivers
Rick Hesslein delivering equipment to a job site

Videos

Time-lapse video of Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions installing a culvert protection cage.

How Beavers Build Dams — Leave It to Beavers (PBS video)

A family of beavers, snug inside their lodge (video by Jeff Hogan)

More Resources