BDA’s are very popular with the beaver-curious. No commitment, no surprises, just a fake beaver dam that is totally controlled and designated by you the landowner. By the time actual flat-tailed residents move in the difficult acceptance phase is already over. All that’s left is the sitting back and reaping rewards.;

It’s got to be a little tough when that planted willow starts getting eaten though. Hopefully by then they’re already convinced.

Rancher greens arid site with beaver dam analogs

BRUNEAU, Idaho — Rancher Chris Black is using beaver dam analogs to make his property wetter and greener.

The structures, with their willow walls and intermittently spaced wooden poles, mimic beaver dams by holding back or slowing water. They’re effective and fairly cheap — important in that they can blow out occasionally, just like the real thing.

“Since ’17 when they put them in, that whole stretch now has become continuously watered,” Black said. “The meadows are starting to sponge that water up, and become greener and more alive.”

Black, with help from state and federal agencies as well as volunteers, has been using the analogs on Deep Creek tributary Hurry Up Creek, which dries up in summer heat. The structures help to keep water in the creek longer and raise the water table. About a dozen of the 30-plus analogs planned are installed.

See how good it works? It might be hard to convince a rancher that beaver are his friend, but install a dam with hydraulic posts and he’s your man! Meanwhile much of the west is starting to get the message.

“Most species are pretty dependent on wet meadows and things, as are my cows,” he said. “If you can manage those and create habitat, you are going to have more wildlife and more benefits.”

“This is low-tech, low-cost restoration,” said USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Sagebrush Restoration Specialist Derek Mynear. “This is not a new concept, but it is certainly taking off here in the West.”

Several places in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado, Washington and Oregon have bravely tried BDA’s with excellent results. Only the feather river in poor cowardly little California. Gosh I wish we were all as smart as a rancher. Here’s an examUpload Filesple from up by Ashland.

It’s about dam time

Deep in the Colestin Valley, between a meadow and a rolling oak woodland, there is a creek. And in that creek there is a dam. Willow branches are intertwined with fir logs, creating a structure that spans the width of the streambed. Its base is lined with grapefruit-sized rocks, covered by a thick coating of mud.

It’s a dam that would make a beaver proud, but this one was built by humans.

Last week, Lomakatsi and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service created three engineered structures along Gen Creek to slow and spread the flow of water. Using all natural materials, these “beaver dam analogs” are designed to enhance streamside habitat for fish and other wildlife, while reducing further erosion of the creek. They provide many benefits of actual beaver dams.

Send in the humans. It seems like we let them do whatever they want anyway, Let them do some good for a change.

“One of the goals of the project is to slow velocities and encourage water in the creek to more frequently access its surrounding floodplain,” said Dave Johnson, wildlife biologist for the FWS office in Yreka, California. “Historically, before the stream became so deep and narrow, water used to frequently overflow into the surrounding meadow, supporting alder, willow, chokecherry and other plants that created a wealth of wildlife habitat.”

For centuries, beaver shaped the very makeup of the North American landscape. At one point, the United States was covered with enough water from beaver-created ponds to fill an area the size of California, Oregon and Washington combined. When beaver were eradicated during the fur trade, waterways lost their keystone stewards and hydrologic architects.

Fortunately, beaver populations are on the rise as resource managers and private landowners increasingly recognize the essential role they play in ecosystems. In fact, when using beaver dam analogs to restore streams, there is a high likelihood that the restoration efforts will attract actual beavers to move in and maintain the structures as their own.

They say that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Add to that the things YOU don’t kill also make you stronger, if you let them. 

Let beavers make you stronger, California. Come on, you can do it. Just LET them already!