2007 Forest Service obtained permit to trap and kill the beavers from the Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area to avoid them plugging culverts and flooding trails. Volunteers worked on Steep Creek, near the visitor center, to clear culverts. Forest Service had a public meeting to discuss trapping out beavers in the Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area.
2008 Pro-beaver people proposed using volunteers to manage beaver activity, rather than trapping and killing them. US Forest Service agreed to a one-year moratorium on trapping beavers to see how well the volunteer actions worked. The Beaver Patrol was formally founded as a nonprofit group.
Then the Beaver Patrol evaluated the area to plan actions that:
Support fish access
Minimize trail flooding
Provide beaver lodge protection
Initially moved lots of wood to meet goals, then met twice a week to maintain. US Forest Service then granted another year without trapping.
2009 Forest Service added a ditch by an access road, and replaced a culvert with a larger half culvert. Beaver Patrol met onsite with other habitat groups and agencies to help guide future activities.
Mike Callahan, of Beaver Management Institute, traveled to Juneau and inspected the area. He made recommendations for how best to prevent beavers from flooding the area trails.
First beaver exclusion structures were built to protect some area culverts from being blocked by beavers.
2016 Beaver Patrol was shut down from May to mid-August 2016, while we negotiated a five-year agreement with the Forest Service. Trails were often flooded during our shutdown.
All Beaver Patrol work is subject to Forest Service approval. The five-year agreement is now the key factor of obtaining that approval. It is supplemented with annual updates, as well as other communications during the year.
Other groups doing work on Forest Service lands must have Forest Service staff with them on-site. With prior approval granted, with both formal agreements and other communications, The Beaver Patrol can now work in the Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area without Forest Service staff on-site with them.
In-stream structures also require approval of Alaska Department of Fish & Game.
Prior to receiving the five-year agreement in 2016, some spots on the access road and trails were close to the normal level of Dredge Creek. Even modest rainfall would flood the access road and trails. Hikers in the area had to commonly walk through several inches of water.
In the 2016 agreement the Beaver Patrol agreed to both purchase and spread rock on the trails that year. In 2017 the Forest Service bought the rock and the Beaver Patrol spread it. As a result of raising the level of the access road and trails hikers could now wear normal shoes while keeping their feet dry.
2019 Two Dredge Creek culverts required substantial work to allow fish passage. Two stick piles about 20 feet long and 9 feet high were created from the wood removed from a large half culvert downstream from Dredge Lake.
Another culvert, where Dredge Creek crossed under the spur road to the Visitor Center, would require clearing up to 5 days a week when salmon were trying to get upstream to spawn. This was a dangerous site to work, as strong current threatened to pull volunteers into a 30-foot long culvert while clearing a large blockage.
After installing structures with a design developed by the Beaver Patrol those two sites now rarely require any work at all. Now no large stick piles are created at the large Dredge Creek half culvert. Furthermore, significant obstructions, and strong currents, no longer occur at the previously dangerous Spur Road site.
David Purdy, a KTOO reporter, interviewed the Juneau Beaver Patrol and published the report shown below.