A combination of excess rains and beaver dams letting go led to a large mass of water flowing through the Red Willow Run in the northeast of Moose Mountain Provincial Park territory, which affected not only parkland but farmland and roads further down the run in the R.M. of Wawken.
Dennis Weatherald, a farmer southwest of Wawota, explained the Red Willow Run is part of a system utilized by his great grandfather and grandfather in the early to mid-1900s. They had built a dam, establishing Weatherald Lake, while using a gate installed in the dam to flood hayland.
One year the gate was plugged open by a tree, they couldn't close the gate, and the lake went dry. Eventually the tree was removed and the gate closed.
This gate slowly went into disuse and has rusted shut according to Weatherald.
With the gate closed the lake slowly filled again and in 1976 the one end of the dam eroded, making a channel for water to escape when full, so the gate being rusted shut was not a problem when water amassed because it would regulate itself.
The beavers in the Moose Mountains, however, moved to plug this area and have maintained the dam ever since according to Weatherald.
It was during the heavy rains of the June 28-30 weekend that eventually led to trouble, however. Further west of Weatherald Lake the area had been dammed by beaver. The beaver dam which was holding back water eventually gave way and the water cascaded down to Weatherald Lake, with a mass of water putting pressure on both the man-made dam and the beaver dam built in place of the eroded end of the man-made dam.
Again this beaver dam was unable to stop the excess water and gave way, while some water would have spilled over the manmade dam, it however continued to hold.
From here Weatherald says the water would have continued to build. As it continued to gather more mass by breaking through subsequent beaver dams along the way, Weatherald says it would have looked like a wall of water and would have ploughed through the Red Willow Run much wider and more forceful than it should have eventually spilling out into farmland in the R.M. of Wawken.
Weatherald took to his plane on Saturday, July 5, to get a bird's eye view of the damage done by flooding along the Red River Run. He explained that approximately three and a half miles of trees were washed out, the water then went on to affect numerous sections of farmland, and travel over nine roads in total.
The sloughs the beaver had created through the run with dams were completely drained and it was this continuous collection of water along the run as each beaver dam broke that Weatherald says really affected the following flood event. In his opinion it would have been lessened had there been more beaver management in the area, stopping this back up of water by the beaver dams.
"They [Moose Mountain Provincial Park] have to treat it like a system because that's what it is," Weatherald explained.
Weatherald says there used to be trappers in the area who dealt with beaver east of Hwy 9 for the park, but that beaver management in this area hasn't been a priority lately. The trappers who used to work in this area are mostly too old for the work and younger generations are not picking it up, which seems to be a trend in trapping.
The area which was backed up by beaver was largely in the park and Weatherald would like to see runoffs such as the Red Willow Run clearer in the future as the affects of the system will be felt in areas other than the park.
In 2009, prior to the 2011 flood event a few people were given permission to blow a few strategic dam locations, but this is no longer common practice east of Hwy 9, Weatherald explained. The blasting of these dams though he feels did help in 2011.
"When a 20 foot high beaver dam or bigger breaks, there's just a gush of water that comes down, almost like a tsunami," Weatherald said.
Weatherald has since uploaded an in-time video of the aftermath of the floods from his flight on July 5, as well as a quarter speed video. Links for both can be found on The Carlyle Observer Facebook page.
