The fallout from BeaverCon Colorado has been beyond glorious. We’ve had article after article boasting about beaver benefits but this one takes the proverbial cake.
When flash floods filled Colorado Springs streets last summer, the water raged down from Black Forest all the way to Dallas May’s ranch north of Lamar.
The flood made the lengthy journey in just two days, but when it hit May’s wetlands, the water slowed way down. It took 2½ days to travel just 7 miles through the ranch, May said.
The muddy floodwaters left his property clean and clear, filtered by a wetland system created by beavers, who build their dams on the High Plains with bulrush and cattails, unlike their fellows in the mountains.
Could you design a better ad for beavers than a rancher who says their dams protected my land during the floods? I think Not.
“If it wasn’t for these beavers, there would be no water going into the (Arkansas) river from here,” May said. At twilight one day in October, May showed off several beaver ponds on his property during what is typically a dry time for waterways across Colorado. The beavers stayed well out of sight, but he described them as bigger than those in the mountains, and adventurous when necessary, venturing out of the safety of the waterways to trek across his alfalfa fields.
May also explained his philosophy for managing the ranch he’s worked since the 1980s and now owns with his family.
“Our goal is to keep everything in as natural a state as we can. … We don’t kill coyotes. We don’t kill prairie dogs. We don’t kill rattlesnakes. We don’t trap or poison anything. If God intended for a species to be here, we want it to be here,”he said. When the system is intact, it functions well. The coyotes have plenty to eat and don’t touch his cattle, he said.
I am literally swooning.
The healthy wetlands keep water flowing in the creek through May’s ranch year-round and recharge the shallow groundwater keeping the grass healthy for his cattle. The wetlands also support a vast number of birds, small fish and native grasses. A team from the Denver Botanical Gardens documented 85 different species of grass, May said.
Go read the whole thing. Dallas is the kind of man of the year we need more of.
I saw this article on Friday but I tucked it away to savor this morning. The funny thing is I didn’t even notice the author right away, just kept thinking, “Wow that’s true,” or “Wow what a great observation” and “Wow this author knows his beavers” until I got to the very end and thought OHHHHHHHHH that’s why!
I’m going to do my usual thing and highlight favorite parts but you should give yourself a holiday treat and go read the whole thing by clicking on the headline.
The Kawuneeche Valley is a picturesque swath of meadow and forest, some 15 miles long, that runs along the western edge of Rocky Mountain National Park. Through its heart flow the headwaters of the Colorado River, lifeblood of the American West, so diminutive this early in its 1,450-mile journey that, in many spots, you could wade it with ease. Stands of lodgepole pine rise above sweeping prairie; moose and elk elegantly browse the Colorado’s banks. The valley’s beauty, however, conceals a dark truth. The Kawuneeche is in an advanced state of ecological collapse — a reality that only reveals itself when you dig into its past.
A century ago, the Kawuneeche — whose name is derived from a word meaning “coyote creek” in the language of the Arapaho, who, along with the Ute and other Tribes, have long called the valley home — was a lush expanse of wetlands maintained by the diligent toothwork of North American beavers. Their massive dams ran to and fro, shunting the Colorado and its tributaries onto their floodplains and swelling them into ponds larger than football fields. Beaver-built wetlands irrigated towering willows, which in exchange furnished Castor canadensis with food and damming material, plant and rodent locked in symbiosis. Cutthroat trout teemed in pools, and boreal toads bred in wetlands.Little wonder that, in his 1913 book “In Beaver World,” Enos Mills, the naturalist who helped to found Rocky Mountain, deemed beavers the “original conservationist.” Protecting them, Mills declared, “would help keep America beautiful.”
Okay right there, that started to get my attention. I always love a good reference to Enos MIlls. Especially my favorite chapter of my favorite book about my favorite animal.
Over time, however, the Kawuneeche’s beaver-built utopia crumbled. Settlers sowed non-native grasses to feed livestock and dug ditches to drain wetlands. Hunters wiped out wolves and other predators, permitting voracious herbivores to later proliferate and mow down willows. And the National Park Service, having deemed beavers tree-felling, land-flooding nuisances, allowed trappers to kill more than 200 in the 1940s. Those and other stressors conspired to parch the once-wet Kawuneeche. “We’ve lost 90% of the water in this valley,” David J. Cooper, a senior research scientist emeritus at Colorado State University, told me.
Similar stories have transpired across the West, where few ecosystems, once afflicted, fully rebound. In Rocky Mountain, though, the Kawuneeche Valley Restoration Collaborative, or KVRC, a coalition that includes the Park Service and a host of partners, has made a multimillion-dollar bet that recovery is still possible. The members of the collaborative, which formed in 2020, have high and diverse hopes for the initiative. Saving the Kawuneeche will, they believe, enhance wildlife habitat, protect drinking water, filter out the sediment clouding downstream lakes and reservoirs, and defend the area against wildfire, among other benefits. “Restoring and protecting the headwaters of the Colorado River should be important to everyone,” said Kaci Yoh, philanthropy director at the Rocky Mountain Conservancy.
When a stream loses beavers it loses. Period.
To that end, KVRC is deploying a range of approaches, among them controlling invasive vegetation, planting willows and fencing riparian areas to keep out hungry herbivores. Most of all, the group is banking on one of the West’s most innovative restoration techniques: imitating — and then enlisting — beavers themselves. But reversing decades of ecological degradation is no easy task, even with the assistance of rodent engineers. Can the collaborative restore the Kawuneeche to its erstwhile glory — before it unravels entirely?
I usually appreciate a good BDA reference that values actual beavers but this was outstanding. Highlighting the misunderstood wolf story in Yellowstone, AND drawing attention to the real hero.
If the Kawuneeche Valley is a horror movie, its opening scene occurs more than a century ago, with the arrival of colonists. Yet the Kawuneeche mostly survived those early assailants; as recently as the 1990s, 10-foot-tall willows and multiacre beaver ponds endured. In recent decades, however, the valley’s deterioration has accelerated, fueled by the appetite of a gigantic interloper: moose.
Historically, Colorado was not totally unfamiliar territory to Alces alces, the largest member of the deer family. Nineteenth-century settlers noted its presence, and killed one near the future Rocky Mountain National Park. But those animals were likely transients from Wyoming, rather than members of an established population. Then, in 1978 and 1979, Colorado’s wildlife department captured two dozen of the half-ton ungulates in Wyoming and Utah and released them near Rocky Mountain — a cavalier decision made with flimsy environmental review, and at least partly to satisfy hunters.
Moose wiping out willow which wipes out beavers which dries the land and grows more grass which feed more moose to wipe out more willow.
I guess its not that rare to make conditions that reinforce what you need to survive.
To that end, KVRC is deploying a range of approaches, among them controlling invasive vegetation, planting willows and fencing riparian areas to keep out hungry herbivores. Most of all, the group is banking on one of the West’s most innovative restoration techniques: imitating — and then enlisting — beavers themselves. But reversing decades of ecological degradation is no easy task, even with the assistance of rodent engineers. Can the collaborative restore the Kawuneeche to its erstwhile glory — before it unravels entirely?
Oooh call on me! I know I know! We need more articles like this. Thoughtful reads that highlight that you can’t just throw in some BDAs and make everything better. It takes actual Bs which means you need actual willow which mean you need protection from elk and moose and cattle.
If browsing is the problem, one simple solution is to keep moose out. Cooper and de Silva Shewell led us to an exclosure, surrounded by nearly 8-foot-high wire mesh, that the Park Service erected in 2011 to protect 16 acres from willow-hungry ungulates. De Silva Shewell opened a rusted gate and walked into what she called the “secret garden.” We were immediately engulfed by a jungle of willows, many taller than me, so dense that we had to walk single-file. It was a tantalizing glimpse into the shrubby paradise that once blanketed the Kawuneeche. “Fences are not an ideal tool, but they’re effective for our purposes right now,” de Silva Shewell said — at least until the willows have grown high and thick enough that moose won’t immediately mow them down.
A certain semiaquatic rodent, too, seemed enthused. The exclosure straddled the Colorado, which a beaver colony had interrupted with a 40-foot dam woven from gnawed willow and alder — presently under construction, judging from its patina of fresh mud. Pooled water trickled around the dam’s flank, dampening sedges and soaking the earth to hydrate willows and expedite their growth.
Go beavers!
The lesson: fencing out moose helped, but it wasn’t enough to swiftly restore the Kawuneeche. Instead, KVRC would have to take dramatic action — and give the valley’s beleaguered beavers a more substantial boost.
Just fencing some willow or reintroducing a predator ain’t enough. How can we best help beavers help us?
Can the park continue on that bold path in the Kawuneeche? Park leaders have recognized the valley’s crisis; now its task is to communicate the problem, and the urgency of remediating it, to the public. As Aldo Leopold, a guy who knew something about the harms of excessive ungulates, famously put it, “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.” The implication of Leopold’s lament is that environmental degradation is both subtle and ubiquitous; once you’ve seen it, you can’t ignore it. Yet wounds, once inflicted, can still heal — particularly when beavers are involved in the operation.
Oh Ben and Beavers! You had me at “If you build it.”
I’d never heard of Credit Island until this story. It’s such a sorry working man’s alternative to Treasure Island that I think Iowa would be ashamed of itself to promote the name. But I guess now that America is oligarchy central it’s a perfect title for a park for the common man and woman.
Apparently the beavers there have exceeded their limit.
I’m not clear what makes Brian say that these trees are going to their food cache…certainly the ones they’re just sampling aren’t.They look like the typical winter blitzkreig that we would see sometime between Christmas and New Year.
Young beavers having a all night kegger and biting off WAY more than they could chew.
Rest assured that I am a great fan of stories about landowners insisting on keeping their beavers. But this gives beaver believers a bad name. Of course it begins with photos of nutrias because why be accurate when you can slander?
If you live in an area where a lot of wild animals live, sometimes you need to treat the animals with neighborly consideration.In today’s story, the problem involves nature, including beavers, a beaver dam, and property damage. The neighbors don’t see eye to eye about what to do about the problem.Find out how the story unfolds…
AITA For refusing to remove a beaver dam on my property that is causing flooding and property damage to my neighbors
few years ago I purchased a few dozen acres of land in a rural area and built a house there.
After a lifetime of the hustle and bustle of city life, I love the peace, quiet, and serenity that rural living has given me.
Things were fine at first… My nearest neighbors live a couple miles away and until recently I have barely interacted with them. They are a younger couple that inherited the property from one of their families.
One of the things I love best about my property is the variety of wildlife that lives here. I’ve seen deer, otter, coyote, fox, dozens of species of bird, and beaver.
There is a small river (more of a large creek than a river) that flows through my property and I live downstream from my neighbors. The beavers have built a dam just a few hundred yards on my side of the property line.
That sounds nice. A landowner who appreciates the wildlife on their creek.
Now that the snow here has started to melt, the creek has been running like crazy and the beaver dam has apparently caused quite a bit of flooding on my neighbor’s property and caused damage to some outbuildings and cropland.
My neighbors came to my house a couple weeks ago and told me about the flooding problems.
I was aware of the dam, but had no idea of the issues it was causing them.
They asked me if I would be willing to remove the dam.
Ummm
I told them that removing a beaver dam is a hell of a lot of work and unless you remove the beavers, they are just going to rebuild it anyway, so in my opinion it’s not worth it.
They asked why I don’t just remove the beavers, and I told them I like the beavers. I clarified to them that “removing” the beavers means terminating them, not just trapping them and bringing them to a new home.
They got very upset and frustrated with me because they don’t know what else to do about the water.
I understand their feelings. I’ve dealt with water damage before. I know how much it sucks.
What? The beavers will just rebuild so I won’t keep my land from damaging your property? Really? Is that an actual thing people say? I weep for you the Walrus said and deeply sympathize….
But I’m not going to go to the effort of removing a dam just for the beavers to rebuild it again, and I’m not going to remove the beavers.
I told them they are free to try and remove the beavers if they are on their land, but even if they do, it’s likely more beavers will just move in to fill the void.
The husband was getting heated, threatened to sue me and his wife tried to calm him down, but I told them I would like them to leave.
The narrator is SO close to being one of us. But so irresponsible and insane they are making us look bad. Sucks about the water damage. Beavers are a keystone species. Too bad.
No discussion of a flow device. No admission that the property owner with the beavers gets the benefit of a pond with more wildlife and the down stream neighbor gets the risk.
I think I sat behind this person on an airplane more than once.
They did, but not before the husband called me an AH.
The next day I went and found the dam and set up a handful of trail cams in the area, just in case.
In my opinion this type of thing is something you have to be willing to deal with if you live in an area that is shared with wildlife.
I understand it sucks for my neighbors and with spring rains coming it’s possible their water issues are only going to get worse, but it’s not really my problem.
Sucks to be you. At this point the author incorporates other opinion cleverly transcribed from reliable sources like reddit.
Oh my God people are going to HATE us all. Yes beavers are good and Yes if you rip out the dam they will just rebuild and YES if you kill them new ones will move in, but because we are wise enough to know all this then we are wise enough TO FIND A SOLUTION.
Pissing off your neighbors will never ever ever protect beavers.
According to CSU, a grant from the Colorado Water Conservation Board will be used to try and restore beaver habitat near North Catamount Reservoir. Officials said the funding will allow CSU to implement “a beaver-based, low-tech solution to supplement on-going fire mitigation efforts.”
Representatives for CSU said in the past, beaver habitats on the mountain created landscapes with “wetter” trees and meadows that acted as natural fire breaks.
As of early December, the plan was to have simulated beaver structures in the area by September 2025, and CSU said the hope is to see beaver activity in the area within a few years of that implementation.
Apparently there is a lot of interest in the BDAS but I don’t see any mention of planting willow. I hope the hills just covered in it but the photo looks pretty grassy.
2024- early 2025: Project planning, baseline data collection, and forestry management project work
September 2025: Install SBSs and PALS, collect post construction data
2026: Adaptive management of the SBSs and PALS (add, remove, modify structures as needed) and post project data analysis
Ultimately, we hope to spy actual beaver activity in the area within a few years of implementation. Regardless, the project will help protect our nearby infrastructure, increase the resiliency of North Catamount Creek, improve water quality and enhance ecosystem health.
I can’t say I’m fond of the word REGARDLESS. I’d be much happier if you were using some grant money to have young people put in a whole bunch of willow cuttings and fascines.
When flash floods filled Colorado Springs streets last summer, the water raged down from Black Forest all the way to Dallas May’s ranch north of Lamar.
“If it wasn’t for these beavers, there would be no water going into the (Arkansas) river from here,” May said. At twilight one day in October, May showed off several beaver ponds on his property during what is typically a dry time for waterways across Colorado. The beavers stayed well out of sight, but he described them as bigger than those in the mountains, and adventurous when necessary, venturing out of the safety of the waterways to trek across his alfalfa fields.
