Near Sleeping Bear Dunes, residents battle beavers — and feds

Residents around Little Traverse Lake in Leelanau County routinely deal with flooding
Residents blame beavers damming a stream that empties the lake into Lake Michigan
Residents have asked the National Park Service for permission to remove the beaver dams, but the park only allows dams to be removed after water peaks

Residents around Leelanau County’s Little Traverse Lake know who to blame for the frequent flooding on their properties: beavers.

The flat-tailed rodents dam a creek that drains their lake through Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore into Lake Michigan, causing water to back up in the little lake during major rains and into their yards and crawlspaces. About 20 of 174 properties on the lake regularly flood, said Jeff Shutz, vice president of the Little Traverse Lake Association. In April, he had 5 inches of water in his crawlspace.

About three dams on the creek below Little Traverse Lake cause the problems, and residents say a solution worked for years — removing dams as soon as they pop up, so beavers build them elsewhere.

But for the last decade or so, the National Park Service has not allowed proactive removal and has instead only allowed residents to remove dams when water peaks.

“By then, it’s too late, after people have property damage,” said lakeside resident Doug Verellen, who has gathered dozens of property owners’ signatures on a petition encouraging the Park Service to again allow proactive dam removal.

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A beaver — Beavers have dammed Shalda Creek, which drains Little Traverse Lake into Lake Michigan. Little Traverse Lake residents blame dams for regular flooding on their properties. (Photo via Shutterstock)

Officials from the Park Service and Sleeping Bear Dunes did not return messages seeking comment for this story.

However, Sleeping Bear Dunes Superintendent Scott Tucker told the Little Traverse Lake Association, in a statement posted to the lake association’s website in May, that the Park Service recognizes that “specific and limited circumstances” exist when beaver dams cause flooding and that a Park Service hydrologist is “developing clear, objective trigger points that identify when targeted intervention with beaver dams may be necessary.

“It is important to emphasize that the (Park Service) has not issued — and will not issue — blanket approval for beaver dam manipulation,” the May statement read. “Any intervention must be supported by data and justified by the specific circumstances at hand.”

Beavers build dams to protect themselves from predators, living in shallow lodges accessible by tunnels. Turning creeks and rivers into slow-moving ponds is a boon to the environment, as well, supporting fish and wildlife. One study claimed that dammed ponds can create 80% more species than undammed ones.

Dams can create tensions with homeowners, though, and beavers are not protected animals. Michigan allows seasonal trapping and if they’re a nuisance to property.

Verellen and other lakeside residents said dam removal was routine — and park rangers even helped — until about 2012, when the Park Service suddenly and without explanation stopped allowing it.

Residents say flooding has become routine since.

“It just feels like they’re reluctant to let us do this when for decades prior it wasn’t an issue,” Verellen said. “I don’t get it.”

The nearly 72,000-acre Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore has been a national park since 1970. In 2014, Congress set aside nearly 33,000 acres of the park — including areas downstream of Little Traverse Lake — as wilderness. It isn’t clear if the wilderness designation has anything to do with the park’s decision to stop allowing proactive beaver dam removal.

Meanwhile, Cleveland Township and the Leelanau County Road Commission have spent money engineering a new, $1.1 million culvert project near where Little Traverse Lake meets the creek to help bring down water levels, but the township board has decided it won’t expend another dime until the downstream beaver problem is solved.

“Einstein’s definition of stupidity is ‘doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,’” Township Supervisor Tim Stein wrote in an op-ed in the Leelanau Enterprise. “Well, I can assure you that myself and Cleveland Township are done being stupid!”

Stein declined to comment to Bridge for this story, and Road Commission officials did not return a message seeking comment.

Little Traverse Lake drains into Lake Michigan’s Good Harbor Bay via a narrow waterway called Shalda Creek. The elevation between the little lake and the big lake is mostly flat, meaning it takes a long time for water to move through the watershed and out to Lake Michigan.

A beaver dam — Beavers routinely dam Shalda Creek, which drains Little Traverse Lake into Lake Michigan, and Little Traverse Lake residents blame the rodents for regular flooding on their properties. (Courtesy of David Skjaerlund)

Beavers are damming Shalda Creek between Little Traverse Lake and Good Harbor Bay, causing water to back up in the watershed, according to the lake association.

In a 2015 study posted on the lake association’s website, removing just one beaver dam caused Little Traverse Lake levels to drop more than half an inch.

When the dams aren’t removed before winter, water backs up throughout the snowy season and then spring rains — like the record-breaking rains that flooded half the state in April — cause the water table and the lake levels to rise, flooding yards and homes.

That’s why residents want to clear out dams now before heavy autumn rains lead into another snowy winter that backs up the watershed.

Shutz, of the lake association, said he’s optimistic about the possibility of a compromise.

“I love the park,” he said. “It’s wonderful to have it out our back door. And I understand very well their desire to make it a wilderness area where animals have free rein. I have no animosity toward them. I hope we can work together and come up with some sort of beaver dam maintenance policy. They’re good guys at the park and they listen.”

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