Giving troublesome beavers a second chance
These beavers are part of the Beaver Translocation Program and are the third group this year to be relocated from the Valley floor to the Rio Grande National Forest. “Problem” or “nuisance” beavers are more often than not, just killed. When their dam building collides with agriculture or when they are perceived to be displacing water levels or threatening water rights, beavers are seen as pests and are treated as such. The hope is that this program will eventually lead to less conflict and more coexistence.
The future, Reese and Born say, is coexistence.
The Beaver Translocation Program is a part of the Rio Grande National Forest Wet Meadows Restoration Project. The Rio Grande Headwaters Restoration Project and the Forest Service have partnered on a new pathway for beavers to be placed higher in the mountains where they can have more direct influence on the watersheds and avoid the nuisance label. Projects like these have sprung up over the United States and in Canada, but work really didn’t start in Colorado until about two years ago.
“There’s always going to be conflicts on the Valley floor,” said Born, stewardship coordinator for the Rio Grande Headwaters Restoration Program. “I think of this as much a service to irrigators and water rights holders in the Valley as it is a benefit to the forest.”
Beavers play a vital role in watershed health; their impacts on the environment as a whole are widespread and well-known. However, where beavers excel in some places, they can be real problems in others. Particularly on the Valley floor, where their work and the work of farmers and ranchers collide.
Every beaver relocation article is a little bit treacherous. Opportunities for shudders and successes. What will this hold?
Reese and Born, with two adult beavers, two yearlings and a kit, load into a Forest Service truck and drive the length of the Valley until they are high in the Rio Grande National Forest. For those few hours, the five beavers traveled faster and further than they ever have before.
Beavers are nature’s engineers, second perhaps only to humans. Yet there is an age-old tension between us and them that has forced us to think differently about what techniques can reduce conflicts and make sure that the Rio Grande National Forest’s watersheds and the Rio Grande stay healthy.
Overgrazing and drought are two factors at play that threaten watersheds and streams. The relocated beavers will call the Rios de los Piños home and even though their future is somewhat cloudy, they have been given another shot at life and an opportunity to do their jobs.
If there’s enough habitat, they’ll stay together as a multi-generation family unit. But if there’s limited food or habitat they’ll move away.
At the release site, Reese and Born pull on their waders. Reese comforts the beavers who at this point have huddled into the corners or against the gates of the kennels, eyes wide and hearts racing.
The best part of this article is that it clearly emphasizes why beavers matter to stream health and water storage. And how if you get one family of nuisance beavers you are likely to get more.
In the meadows that beavers occupy, their dams act like sponges, soaking up water and dispersing it far and wide. Born said, “You have this whole mini-aquifer of groundwater that if the beaver dam is there is just full. And that sponge is going to help release water longer into the season and keep the river wet. It’s just the same as the Rio Grande and the aquifers here.”
There’s a direct relationship between beavers and water health.
Born said that would entail installing groundwater transducers and streamflow gauges before and after one of these restoration projects. That has never really occurred in the San Luis Valley before. The hope, he said, is to show that they are either increasing flows or doing very little.
Groundwater traducers. I’ve been looking for that term forever! The New Mexico Beaver Summit said that these tools were key to helping landowner understanding how beaver could help them even if they appeared to be altering stream flow. They needed to know the water wasn’t GOING away just because they couldn’t see it anymore.
All of these precautions are taking place because Reese and Born want to see these animals thrive and they want to ensure the health of the environment. Again, beavers are second only to humans in their ecosystem engineering. They are the water’s guides, and despite their conflict with humans, are a keystone species that we would sorely miss.
What comes out of this program has yet to be seen, but it’s promising. Whatever data and answers can be drawn will be shared for years to come.
Even if the success rate is 30 to 50 percent and not every beaver released doesn’t make it, Reese said she still feels “like the effort we’re putting in is worthwhile for the potential benefits of having more beaver on the landscape.”
Um,,,No. 30 percent survival rate is not okay. Especially if you make the job of convincing farmers and ranchers that they need to cooperate with beavers 90% harder by telling them that there’s an easy way out.
I don’t think there’s any transducer that can measure that.
