Beavers are busy, and dam problems multiply

Robert Dahl was driving down a road in Carlton County when he received a call from an excavator operator. The operator was going to leave two beaver dams alone and told Dahl about new ones popping up at other sites the county monitors.

It was not an unusual call for the county’s department of transportation maintenance supervisor.

“Once a week [we] have the excavator out opening all these sites,” Dahl said. “Looking at them, monitoring them, making that decision: Do we need to open it up? Is it going to cause a problem for the weekend? Is it going to flood the road? What are we looking at?”

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