Muskrat Control for Shorelines: Ponds, Lakes, Rivers, and Streams
Tired of muskrats chewing up your shoreline and digging into your land? We can help. Check out this case study of a Minnetonka shoreline we made less tasty for muskrats, or contact us, or read on first.
Muskrats and other furry troublemakers can damage or wreck your shoreline. They start digging at the water’s edge, and burrow well into the ground. When they’ve concluded whatever business they came to do (it’s a mystery to us), they leave behind little tunnels that collapse.
Muskrat damage on a shoreline
Muskrat burrow near a shoreline
Fortunately, we’ve developed a tried and true method of muskrat-control: we add a layer of steel mesh to your shoreline, under the surface and out of sight. It’s the same basic principle as chicken wire, except it’s on a shoreline and it’s not an eyesore. Whether it’s a riprapped shoreline or a shoreline populated with wild native grasses, we’ve got you covered. Muskrats can gnaw through the cheap landscape fabric most shorelines are built on, but they’ll never chew through our blanket of PVC-coated hexagonal galvanized muskrat mesh. They may try, but it won’t taste real good.
We use a 72-inch-wide roll of our proprietary galvanized muskrat mesh, which leaves us enough slack to extend the coverage approximately 2 feet into the water. Getting the mesh into the water is the key to creating a muskrat-resistant shoreline, because it blocks off the softer areas where muskrats can most easily dig. In some cases, we’ll even use two or three rolls to extend coverage up a steep lakeshore or riverbank – fortifying your shoreline on both sides.
Although they’re clever enough that we can’t call our steel armor muskrat-proof, it is muskrat-resistant. It makes muskrats’ digging so much more difficult that they’ll just go to the next shoreline instead. That’s the other side of the muskrat-intelligence coin: they’re smart enough not to overwork themselves.
If you’re looking to deter muskrats and other stray critters from your shoreline – whether it’s on a lake, creek, river, or stream – ask us about adding muskrat-resistance to your shoreline.
-Nick Heintzelman
Review on Google Maps (5 stars)
Nick’s shoreline, before and after:
