Beaver Beneficial Management Practices (BMPs) are practices that reduce or remove risks of human-beaver conflicts associated with the management of beavers. Often a combination of strategies may be beneficial to address a particular issue or concern. The purpose of the Alberta Beaver BMPs is to provide information about available beaver management tools with the goal of improving implementation of beaver coexistence tools in Alberta. By improving human-beaver coexistence, challenges can be mitigated while still maintaining beavers on the landscape, supporting watershed and ecological health and the ecosystem services they provide.
An interactive decision tree was created to accompany the BMPs to aid the decision-making process for how best to address the beaver issue at hand. The tree prompts yes/no answers to a series of questions that guides the user to consider both reactive and proactive management approaches that include coexistence tool options. Clicking on the coexistence tool of choice will take you to the corresponding section of the BMP document.
Resources
The challenges related to beaver management and the implementation of coexistence tools are not unique to Alberta. Land managers in other jurisdictions and researchers in other Canadian provinces and across the United States and United Kingdom have developed beaver management plans or beneficial management practices, which were reviewed during the creation of this beaver BMPs guide. The following resources are exemplary beaver management plans and decision trees that were referred to during the creation of the above decision tree:
Development of the BMPs for each tool came from a variety of sources. External sources are referenced throughout the document as needed. Materials developed and owned by the authors of this report are not always individually cited but included several key sources:
