So close and yet so far. Yesterday’s magically returned website didn’t disappear into thin air like I worried it would. But it did eventually grow a crippling handicap that I’ll still have to wrestle with today.
If you want to see what it is, try clicking on any “Page” in the drop down menus.
The problem with inheriting a large website of patches is that fixing one part often breaks the other part! I’m sure we’ll get there. It will just require another robust dose of snappy hold music.
But enough shop-talk, lets go to Oregon and talk about BDA’s.
Mimicking nature’s dam builders
Now, in an about-face that bodes well for beavers, stream restoration professionals are turning to small wooden impoundments as a way to improve fish habitat and riparian areas across the West. Made of pounded posts and woven willow whips, these beaver dam analogs are considerably cheaper than other restoration techniques.
Even if BDAs don’t attract beavers to an area, they mimic the action of natural beaver dams — slowing stream flow, improving groundwater connectivity to the surrounding area and building up sediment to improve riparian areas. Juvenile fish can swim through gaps in BDAs, and the minimum fish-jumping height for older fish can be achieved by installing multiple BDAs.
Beaver dam analogs can also help reduce stream water temperature, according to Stephen Bennett, an adjunct professor in watershed sciences at Utah State University. BDAs can increase groundwater connectivity through annual spring flooding and by the hydraulic action of the standing water behind the dams.
Hey! I got an idea about bring back beaver benefits. Just stop killing them! How’s that for a novel idea?
Getting the word out on beaver dam analogs was the goal of a workshop held in Grant County July 24-26. Thirty-five stream restoration professionals attended talks at Grant County Regional Airport and field trips to Murderers Creek, Camp Creek and Bear Creek in the Malheur National Forest.
Attendees included people from watershed councils, soil and water conservation districts, federal and state agencies, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and private contractors.
The purpose of the workshop was not just instructing people on how to build beaver dam analogs or persuading them to use the technique, but also to release new information on what’s been accomplished, said Elise Delgado, project manager for the South Fork John Day Watershed Council.
“Not everyone will leave a believer,” she said.
The workshop was sponsored by the John Day Basin Partnership, which represents groups from Prairie City to the Columbia River. Herb Winters, a project manager at the Gilliam Soil and Water Conservation District, sits on the partnership’s steering committee.
Well gosh. If you can get people excited about beaver dams by letting them build them themselves I guess its a good thing. But you do know beavers have their own ideas, right? They might happily use that BDA and then add three more upstream when you didn’t plan to have a beaver dam at all. You know how it is when you bring in a designer. They always have their own plans for the space.
At least Nick has the right idea.
Nick Bouwes, a professor at the College of Natural Resources at Utah State University, advised workshop members to be efficient in how they build BDAs because a project might require a lot of them. He said he prefers a messy one, the messier the better — if a post goes in crooked because of rocks, let it be, he said.
Bouwes was a leader in the largest beaver dam analog project in the United States, on Bridge Creek near Mitchell, where a powerful stream had gouged a 6- to 10-foot-deep incision. About 2.5 miles was treated to improve habitat for steelhead starting in 2005.
Bouwes and his team built 121 BDAs from 2009 to 2012. By 2013, beavers had fortified 60 of the BDAs and built 115 new dams. The stream bed gradually filled with sediment and rose back to the top of the trench, and the submerged area tripled.
Monitoring showed Bridge Creek produced nearly three times as much fish as a nearby control stream, and water-temperature spiking eased. The results made Bridge Creek the poster child for BDA projects, drawing international attention and documentary filmmakers.
As it happens I’ll be using Nick’s video tomorrow in my presentation at Sulpher Creek Nature center, which makes it a very good time to re-share.
