Day: November 7, 2023

Hey guess what Columbia has to say about beavers?

Discover Beaver Power: Restoring Watersheds with Nature’s Engineers

From Sense of Place:

By Sarah Fox

Hood River, Ore. November 6, 2023 — Sense of Place, will feature Beaver Power: Teaming Up with Nature’s Engineers to Restore Our Watersheds on November, 15th, 2023. This event will be offered in person at the Columbia Center for the Arts in Hood River, Oregon, and via livestream.

The Pacific Northwest has long been a region where the coexistence of humans and beavers has shaped both the landscape and humans’ understanding of ecological systems, but the history is complicated. In Oregon, the Beaver State, beavers are considered a predatory species, and wide-scale trapping in the Pacific Northwest nearly extirpated them in the mid-1800s. In modern times, beavers can quickly wreak havoc by downing trees and flooding roads and property. However fresh research is revealing the ways that beavers can offer innovative solutions to pressing environmental challenges. From mitigating wildfires and addressing the impacts of climate change, to actively participating in landscape restoration and promoting biodiversity. Margaret Neuman and Jeanette Burkhardt will dig into this history and explore how these industrious creatures are emerging as unexpected partners in a more sustainable future.

So I guess Canyonville isn’t the only part of Oregon that will be buzzing with beaver benefits over the next week or so. Good, It is called the beaver state after all.

As the Executive Director of Mid-Columbia Fisheries, Margaret Neuman has been a key part of growing the organization from a small start-up to an important regional partner in salmon recovery in Central Washington. Under Margaret’s leadership, Mid-Columbia Fisheries has implemented more than 90 salmon habitat restoration projects since 2005. The group also reaches more than 2,000 school students annually with field-based conservation education programs. Margaret has more than 30 years of experience in watershed restoration, including organizational, grant, and program management. Margaret helped found the Wishpush Working Group in 2018 and is excited about the benefits beavers provide in improving watershed conditions for fish, wildlife, and people. Margaret loves being in nature and is grateful to call the Columbia River Gorge home.

Jeanette Burkhardt has been working in Fisheries and Natural Resources in the Columbia Gorge for 20 years, the last 18 as a watershed planner for the Yakama Nation at the intersection of policy, planning, restoration, and education. Since 2018, she has been involved in the Wishpush Working Group, working towards more beaver-ful and resilient watersheds in the Tribe’s Southern Territories. As a self-professed plant nerd and admirer of the natural world, she has a personal and professional passion for letting nature do the work—supporting natural processes as they help us recover our impaired ecosystems and the species that depend on them.

Beaverful. Now that’s a word I like. America the Beaverful.