I’d just like to pause a moment here and point out that this article is not from Washington or my mother. It is from UTAH. The home of many contrasts from Jebediah Smith to Mary Obrien. At the moment I’m thinking the scales are tipping in beavers favor.

Can mimicking beavers help save the Great Salt Lake?

SALT LAKE CITY — About five years ago, Willy Stockman’s home on the bank of Emigration Creek became a wildlife hotspot.

In the summers of 2017 and 2018, elk, coyotes and turkeys started showing up in her backyard where she’d never seen them before. Huge elk herds came down the canyon and started occupying her and her neighbors’ yards.

Though the creatures were a sight to see, it was a symptom of a big problem in the canyon: A severe drought meant upper parts of the canyon had no water, so wildlife were venturing further down-canyon in search of a drink.

“Parts of Emigration Canyon went dry and had never been dry before,” Stockman said. “People were putting out big bins of water, because there was no water. … And it’s all part of the big problem.”

Stockman, along with other residents of Emigration Canyon, formed the Emigration Canyon Sustainability Alliance in 2019 to improve water quality, increase stream flows and protect wildlife through groundwater studies, septic system planning and other actions.

One method the group is exploring to help improve the health of the Emigration Creek watershed involves mimicking another wildland creature — the North American beaver.

Well well well. The chickens come home to roost. Now lets just HOPE that when you immitate beavers well enough to actually GET BEAVERS to take over you don’t kill them when they arrive. Okay?

For many ecosystems, beavers are a keystone species, meaning other animals and plants in the ecosystem couldn’t survive without them. The industrious rodents’ dams create crucial wetland habitat for other species and help raise the water table so plant roots get a steady supply of water.

Beavers have been reintroduced for decades to restore riparian areas adjacent to waterways, improve stream health and create wetland habitat for birds and insects, according to the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands. But some of these areas are too degraded or damaged, with steep, eroded stream banks and a lack of vegetation, to support beavers’ livelihoods.

Beaver dam analogs, essentially human-made replicas of natural beaver dams, provide benefits to ecosystems and waterways that the buck-toothed burrowers would add in areas that beavers can no longer inhabit. Humans install wooden posts in the stream channels and then weave willows to fill in the gaps.

Well of course they don’t do it as long or as well as ACTUAL beaver dams but sure, if you can get folks to think they’re a good idea, and then notice how much work they are to maintain, and then agree to subcontract to actual beavers. well then it’s okay. Alls well that ends well.

Completed analogs are designed to kickstart the natural processes of preserving floodplains, restoring wetlands, supporting native vegetation, reducing downstream sedimentation, improving water quality and reducing erosion. Analogs can also improve streams enough to once again make them habitable for real beavers.

In Oregon, one study found that analogs increased the amount of groundwater near streams where they were installed, and that they helped restore riparian areas by stimulating willow growth.

A study in California found that analogs added complexity to streams that had previously been lost. The study also found that the analogs helped connect streams to other waterways through floodplains.

Another Oregon study, commissioned by the U.S. Forest Service, found that analogs improved habitat for fish and other wildlife, and that they can muster the return of real beaver populations on agricultural lands.

An unfunded study in California by Perryman et al found that if biologists like playing in the mud so dam much they should be learning to install actual flow devices to all beavers to stick around and do this work themselves.

The loss of beaver dams in areas where they’ve historically been present are tied to some of the same issues of suburban sprawl and agriculture expansion that affect the Great Salt Lake’s dwindling water level, according to Hafen. Urban areas on the Wasatch Front probably had more beaver dams before they were developed for human habitation. And agriculture often uses land that might otherwise be suitable for beaver habitat, he added.

“I think there are a lot of situations where installing (analogs) or encouraging beavers to build dams could be helpful, ecologically or ideologically,” Hafen said. “But I think you also have to take that on a case-by-case basis, consider what the goals are for restoration, what the restoration needs are and how those things are going to impact the surrounding landscape.”

Even though beaver dam analogs might not directly raise the water level of the Great Salt Lake, Stockman believes they can be one part of the process of improving the health of the lake’s watershed — and helping those elk, coyotes and turkeys avoid her backyard for greener pastures up-canyon.

“Sometimes I’m thinking of Utah as … a dry orange. It’s not as if you don’t have water anymore — you can stick a straw in it, suck it out, put the water in a reservoir. But in order to get a better fruit, you have to take care of a tree, and a tree is a watershed. That’s where our water is coming from,” Stockman said. “I sometimes think that there is too much focus on seeing the water and not realizing that it’s all of it. We need to address the actual health of the watershed. And so the (beaver dam analogs) are one way to do that.”

Well sure. The salt needs beavers as much as everywhere else. We all know that.