Category: BDA’s

ALUMNUS BEAVERING AWAY

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, BDA's August 17, 2023

Some days the headlines alone are enough to remind me that the world has shifted since I first took on the beaver mantel. There are parts of this article I can barely read without bursting into tears. I knew change would come eventually. I’m glad I was still here to see it happen.

Humboldt alumnus brings back beavers to restore California wetlands

For millions of years, beavers have been the stewards of North American watersheds. Over a hundred million used to ply the streams of the continent. Hunting and habitat loss since colonization have reduced their numbers to somewhere between 10 and 15 million, and many ecosystems which historically relied on beaver stewardship are now absent of the aquatic rodents. In 1941, there were just 1,300 beavers in California. Symbiotic Restoration, founded in 2018 by CPH alumnus Garrett Costello, is a company which seeks to reverse this loss of habitat.

“Our mission is to improve stream and meadow conditions to bring back the beaver,” Costello said, who graduated from Humboldt with a BS in environmental protection and management.

Remember it was a Humboldt grad student that did his thesis on what happened in Martinez when we agreed to cooperate with our beavers. There must be plenty of believers up that way.

BDAs are constructed at points in the stream where flow has been interrupted by a head cut, acting to fill the depression and preventing erosion from continuing upstream.

“As water hits that pond, it slows down and drops and that will slowly build sediment behind the structure, which then strengthens the structure and then it helps reconnect the floodplain because now we don’t have this incision,” Costello said.

Once the stream has been reconnected to the floodplain, the stream is able to meander more widely around. This turns a stream flowing quickly through a deeply cut channel into one which supports a wide, dense belt of riparian vegetation with its lazy flow.

Most of SR’s project sites are in places too remote for construction vehicles, where their use would undermine restoration efforts. Costello and his crew carry out their work the old fashioned way— with sweat, shovels, and axes.

Well the super old fashioned way is to allow beavers everywhere to do it themselves, but okay.

“The program is to incentivize private landowners to do conservation efforts on their land,” Costello said.

One goal of SR is to involve the communities in which they work as stewards of the land, fostering a bottom up approach to conservation.

“Last year, we partnered with Point Blue Conservation Science… we had 50 kids a day come from local elementary through high school to build beaver dams and plant willows with us,” said Costello. For the children, it was fun to build beaver dams in their community creeks.

“And all these kids were so stoked,” Costello said. “‘Oh yeah, go in the woods around here.’ Or, ‘Yeah, my parents work for the timber company in the town. We go hunting out here’. They have that sense of place,”

Even though much of SR’s work is still focused in Northeastern California, Costello hopes to make connections with local Humboldt community organizations in the future. He recently spoke to students in a capstone restoration course, and hopes to form a dedicated Humboldt crew to work on restoration projects in the county.

Let’s just hope that part of your work with landowners is to teach them how to resolve beaver conflicts while keep beavers around.

“Our mission is to improve stream and meadow conditions to bring back the beaver,” Costello said, who graduated from Humboldt with a BS in environmental protection and management.

Beaver will come back on their own. Our job is to just get out of their way.

BDAs to correct a century old problem

Bob Kobres Attitudes towards beavers, BDA's, Beaver ecological impact, Beavers, Beavers and water March 12, 2023

Leave it to Beaver: Partners Collaborate on Beaver Dam Analog Project

Mimicking Mother Nature for Maximum Impact with Minimal Financial and Environmental Cost

By Amanda Smith

“One plus one plus one equals six on this project,” said Kat Hall, restoration manager for The Lands Council, an environmental non-profit organization that seeks to preserve and restore Northwest ecosystems through partnerships.

The excitement is evident in Hall’s voice as she speaks about an innovative and collaborative effort to reconnect and restore aquatic habitat in Thompson Creek, a primary tributary to Newman Lake located northeast of Spokane, Washington. For the past 3 years, Hall has been part of what she calls “a dream team” of federal, state, and local partners to design, implement, and monitor beaver dam analogs (BDAs), human made structures inspired by nature’s busiest builder that efficiently improve the health of aquatic ecosystems.

Historically, Thompson Creek meandered through the lower watershed; but over a century ago, it was straightened to accommodate for agriculture, helping to reduce flooding for farmers. While the straightened channel was beneficial to the farmers, it had less desirable impacts on watershed health. The straighter, less natural flow path increased the speed of the water, led to the erosion of the bank, and transported more sediment and pollutants downstream into Newman Lake. This incision of the creek has also caused a disconnection between the creek and its surrounding floodplains, which has allowed for the dominance of reed canary grass in the area, a non-native species that outcompetes more diverse and beneficial vegetation.

Drone footage of a artificially straightened creek passing through an agricultural field. — Aerial photos taken of Thompson Creek before the completion of the beaver dam analog structures.

Drone footage of a creek beginning to widen and meander after the construction of a beaver dam analog. — Aerial photos taken of Thompson Creek after the completion of the beaver dam analog structures.

There doesn’t seem to be much food to entice beavers yet and that might be good for awhile due to the current poor water quality!:

“One of the primary concerns about straightening the channel and disconnecting it from its floodplain is the increased phosphorous levels we are seeing as a result,” explained Brian Walker, a private lands biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service). “Phosphorous travels with the sediment through Thompson Creek and ends up downstream in Newman Lake, which really impacts the water quality in the lake.”

While phosphorus is a naturally occurring and essential nutrient for plants and animals, too much of it can cause explosive growth of aquatic plants and algae. This can lead to a variety of water quality problems, including low dissolved oxygen concentrations, which can cause fish kills and harm other aquatic life. The major concern with phosphorus in Newman Lake is a toxic blue-green algae bloom that can cause the lake to be closed to recreation and private landowners (see a write-up from USGS on phosphorus and water quality).

“High levels of phosphorous are detrimental to both people and wildlife — just a couple licks of contaminated water can be lethal for pets; it’s pretty bad stuff,” said Walker. “But thankfully, we people are learning how to mimic wildlife to come up with a solution for us all!”

Phosphorous-laden sediment plume flowing into a waterway. — Phosphorous-laden sediment plume flowing from Thompson Creek

Improving Thompson Creek has long been a goal, and several time consuming and costly measures have been implemented in the past with varying degrees of success.

“We weren’t getting the results we hoped for from other projects and we needed to go in a different direction; we needed to get creative,” said Walker.

Inspiration struck in the form of brown fur and bucked teeth — beavers. Like ecosystem engineers, beavers manipulate their environment by building dams that slow the passage of water through a river and can act as a natural filter that cleans the water supply. Beaver dam analogs aim to do the same thing through creating roughness — think speed bumps — to slow water velocity and allow sediment and pollutants to settle. The beaver dam analogs will also raise the water level of Thompson Creek, reconnecting it to its floodplain and allowing for the growth of more natural vegetation to create a healthier ecosystem.

A completed beaver dam analog structure obstructing the flow of a creek. — A completed beaver dam analog structure on Thompson Creek.

“The Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program has had success with at least 20 BDAs in other Washington watersheds and, with the help of our “dream team,” we knew our odds of making positive change in Thompson Creek were high,” Walker said.

The “dream team,” compromised of partners from every level — The Lands Council, Partners for Fish & Wildlife Program at Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge, Gonzaga University, Spokane Conservation District, Newman Lake Property Owners Association, and Spokane County — got to work in 2019 and began making the beaver dam analogs in Thompson Creek a reality.

A group of people stands in a marsh near a beaver dam analog structure. — Engineering students from Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington share the work with staff from the Service and The Lands Council during the implementation phase of the beaver dam analog project which involves pounding posts into the ground.

Read the entire piece here and there is an earlier report from The Spokesman-Review that includes this informative video on BDAs from Life on the Range below.

Heidi is still on the mend but hopes to be back to posting soon.

Bob

REPLACING THOSE PESKY BEAVERS WITH BDA’S

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, BDA's February 6, 2023

Trust Idaho learn only part of the lesson about beaver dam analogues. They have noticed that the little dams produce really really good results for soil and fish, and have decided that the secret to having them is just to get many many people to make them by hand. Because as we have learned this year from nearly every media outlet, only human made beaver dams benefit fish and only relocated beavers can help save us from climate change.

Seriously.

Researchers try to copy beaver dam benefits

Researchers are testing artificial beaver dams as a tool to restore degraded stream systems by improving riparian habitat and bolstering the late-season water supply.

The structures, known as beaver dam analogs, cause water to pool and spill beyond stream banks, supporting marshland vegetation before seeping into the groundwater and re-emerging downstream later.

Material such as willow boughs, sediment and stone comprise the analogs, an option to restore habitat where resources are insufficient to support beavers or where the animals would pose a nuisance.

A team of researchers from University of Idaho’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences and College of Natural Resources is entering the final year of a three-year study of the concept, funded with a $75,000 grant from USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.

75000 is a lot of money just for playing in the water! And you can bet they’ll keep right on trapping beavers while they do it. Because those rodents can seriously mess things up!

The project is bringing the colleges “to ask some of these important social and ecological questions,” Eric Winford, who is leading the project as his dissertation for a doctorate in natural resources, said in a UI release. “Across the West, we can restore some of the function beavers were maintaining in these systems by mimicking their activity.”

“There are potentially hundreds of miles of these meadows throughout the state where these could be applied,” he said.

The intermittent Guy Creek, within UI’s Rinker Rock Creek Ranch in central Idaho’s Wood River Valley, is the research site.The creek at the project’s start flowed through a deep channel disconnected from riparian areas.

Riparian vegetation can be essential for livestock, providing a verdant source of late-season forage, UI said.

Well Joe Wheaton says that this is how it starts. Get some BDA’s on the landscape and let people see what a dramatic effect they have and then when they come back complaining about maintaining them quietly remind them of the B word.

In July 2020, a group of recent high school graduates with the Idaho Conservation Corps helped the team build 65 analogs in three meadows.

The team has been using drones to evaluate gradual changes in the channel. Pools and riffles are forming, and sediment is accumulating behind the structures. Eventual gains in groundwater levels are expected as well as improvements in natural processes such as nutrient cycling.

Researchers anticipate that their stream gauges and groundwater monitoring will show the analogs build up groundwater and hold water until it is needed without curbing flows to downstream users, UI said. The state Department of Water Resources, which is interested in the research, requires anyone who installs a beaver dam analog to get a permit.

“In the lower two meadows we’ve been able to collect water samples later in the season from more pools than the year before,” said Laurel Lynch, College of Ag soil and water systems assistant professor. “It’s too early to say definitively that water levels are increasing, but it does seem anecdotally we’re pushing the system in that direction.”

She and her graduate students also are evaluating how riparian restoration influences water quality, soil carbon, microbial ecology and soil micro-invertebrate density.

That so weird, when we pay for students to make these little obstructions in the water we get more bugs and more soil and more birds and more fish and more otters. It’s such a coincidence! Can we get more students?

The team plans to host field days and workshops at Rinker Rock Creek Ranch, for public land managers and landowners.

Other College of Natural Resources team members include Jason Karl, the Harold F. and Ruth M. Heady Endowed Chair of Rangeland Ecology; and Charles Goebel, head of the Department of Forest, Rangeland and Fire Sciences.

Other College of Ag team members include Melinda Ellison, an assistant professor and Extension specialist focused on the effects of raising livestock on wildlife and range; Ellen Incelli, a graduate student studying environmental science; and Heather Neace, a graduate student studying water resources science and management.

Well I wasn’t born yesterday. I know it takes a man from Idaho to teach anyone from Idaho anything. Don’t listen to me about the workers you should really be enlisting in this effort. What do I know in my crazy golden state. Listen to Jay instead.

CDFW: EMBRACE CALIFORNIA BEAVERS

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, BDA's, Beaver ecological impact January 8, 2023

Yesterday someone asked me about coming to Martinez to see the beavers and mentioned in passing that it was a great article in this issue of Outdoors California, the magazine of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. I said we did not have beavers anymore but I would introduce her to a friend in Fairfield if she wanted to visit theirs and I went hunting for the article which I knew nothing about,

I asked all my beaver buddies including the ones that hired the beaver lobbyist that pushed for the funding and they knew nothing about it either. So I wrote the editor and asked if he might share the article with me. Apparently its in the current issue because I heard from other wildlife buddies too. At the days close I had my prize. And what a prize it is. You are not going to believe this. Sit down. Back away from high windows. Put down anything sharp. Brace every part of yourself that might need bracing.

Trust me.

We Agree: Time to Embrace California Beavers

Beavers are having a well-deserved moment in the discussion around climate solutions. Healthy beaver populations improve their environment in so many ways—from reducing wildfire risks, to making water conditions more hospitable for our native salmon and trout.

In fact, humans have so admired the skilled work of beavers they have spent millions of dollars trying to replicate the benefits they create. As managers of the state’s natural resources, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) is embracing the opportunity to elevate beaver restoration as part of a larger effort to help mitigate the impacts of wildfires, climate change and drought. Thanks to Governor Gavin Newsom’s leadership and the State Legislature, funding for beaver restoration is now part of our playbook, with funds approved in this year’s budget.

Are you crying yet? You will be when you have read this. My arm is turning color because I keep pinching myself over and over to see if I’m dreaming. I wish our original mom beaver was sitting here right now so I could read it to her because I never would have walked this path if it hadn’t been for her implacable courage.

The program funds dedicated scientists who, once hired by CDFW, will begin working on projects that help the environment by bringing beavers back to California rivers where they once thrived.

Beaver dams raise groundwater levels and slow water flow. Slowing down the flow allows water to pool and seep, creating riparian wetlands that support plant, wildlife and habitat growth. Another benefit of beaver dams is the rejuvenation of river habitat for salmon and aquatic insects. The dams also improve water quality because they capture sediment, resulting in clearer water downstream.

Additionally, beaver dams help keep groundwater tables high which can help mitigate drought impacts by keeping vegetation green. This effect can also help fires burn less intensely in riparian areas, which, in the long run, can aid streams and habitats in recovering from fires more quickly. These positive ecosystem benefits are especially true in areas where there are intermittent streams or where streams can disconnect. Once beavers build dams in those areas, the habitat tends to hold water more effectively and allows it to percolate into soils.

BOOM BOOM BOOM!!! We’ve only been pounding this into the table over and over and over at every roomful of people who were fool enough to listen. Some rooms that were more hostile than others. How wonderful to see it trickled in through the hard cracked soil of agricultural management. Did I ever think this day would come?

Shh this is has my favorite part:

Unfortunately, beavers were eliminated from much of their range by the late 1800s due to unregulated trapping and habitat loss. Environmental scientists have tried to duplicate the effectiveness of beaver dams utilizing human-engineered structures called beaver dam analogues. Through this, we have learned that human-created beaver dams can achieve similar carbon sequestration and habitat benefits to that of real beaver dams, but at a much higher cost. Nothing’s better than the real thing, and that means bringing beavers back to their historic habitat and teaching Californians how to coexist with the scientifically named Castor canadensis.

NOTHING IS BETTER THAN THE REAL THING! Be still my heart. Do you hear that Enos Mills and Grey Owl and Hope Ryden? Do you hear that momma beaver who was brave enough to move right into the middle of town and start a family even though dad thought it was a crazy idea?

California’s next step is to expand partnerships with California native tribes, non-governmental organizations, private landowners, state and federal agencies, and restoration practitioners to lay the groundwork for implementing beaver restoration projects. The new funding will help develop a framework for these beaver relocation efforts. CDFW and its partners are looking at the feasibility of taking beavers from areas where they are causing conflict and relocating them to areas where they would have ecosystem benefits. CDFW’s new beaver restoration program allows California to advance on all these fronts—we’re continuing collaboration with partners and stakeholders, continuing to work on restoration sites where we’ve funded beaver dam analogues and continuing to lay the groundwork for re-introduction of beavers in areas where such a move will benefit the ecosystem.

And we’re going to teach people how to live with beavers. The money is for education too. I’d lead with that. It’s the most important part.

Scientists are confident that beaver restoration has the potential to be a nature-based strategy that can aid in reducing wildfire risk, mitigating drought and combating climate change. It’s another piece in the puzzle as CDFW works to implement solutions to some of our greatest environmental concerns.

Allow me to say that it was in October of 2020 that I first dreamed we could possibly even HAVE a California beaver summit and it was in September of 2011 that I really started to pay attention to the crazy idea of the fish and game saying that beavers in California weren’t Native and it was in 2007 that the city of Martinez nearly split itself at the seams to find out of a city could live with beavers and here we are today with the head of fish and wildlife writing WE AGREE! It’s way past time to Embrace Beavers!

BRING BACK BEAVERS BIT BY BIT

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, BDA's, Beaver ecological impact November 27, 2022

This was a fine way to end the holiday weekend. The beavers won the civil war and a fantastic article appeared in Jefferson radio about restoring Vesper meadow near Ashland in the hopes of beavers returning to it.

Bringing back the beavers

For four years, Jeanine Moy has led programming to restore, monitor and explore Vesper Meadow, near Ashland. One of her prime objectives has been to restore Latgawa Creek and set the table for the beaver’s return.

In 2018, Moy was serving as outreach director for the nonprofit Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, but she wanted to create a program or organization of her own that reflected her holistic vision of conservation—one that elevated art along with science, educated people while building community, and restored cultures as well as ecosystems.

She met Ross while teaching a class for older adults at Southern Oregon University. Ross recalls how Moy described that healthy landscapes can act like sponges, slowing and soaking up water.

“That really spoke to me,” says Ross. “Water is so scarce now.”

Ross and Conaway were comfortably retired, and with money in the bank from a house sale in California, they wanted to give back. “We were looking at what we could do with climate change and community building that would be gratifying and open up opportunities for a lot of people,” says Ross, who is nearly 70. She and Moy decided to partner on a project: Ross would acquire a parcel of land ripe for restoration; Moy would live onsite, develop programming and raise funds.

That year, Ross and Conaway purchased 323 acres and worked with the Southern Oregon Land Conservancy to place all but seven in a conservation easement. They named it Vesper Meadow, after the vesper sparrow, a grassland bird discovered there during surveys.

Now that’s the way to do it. Retire and sell your home in California and move to Oregon to bring back beavers. Way to go team!

If you glimpse Vesper Meadow from the highway, you’ll likely see a lovely expanse of open space that’s dotted with wildflowers in early summer and blanketed in snow in winter. It’s hard to spot the degradation unless you know what you’re looking for.

Thanks in large part to beavers, Vesper Meadow was once a complex, wet meadow, says Sarah Koenigsberg, communications director for The Beaver Coalition, a nonprofit focused on promoting beavers as agents of conservation. “The water table was right near the surface, and there were lots of teeny tiny channels and rivulets and wet swampy areas,” she explains. Conifers, which don’t like “wet feet,” grew further upslope, but aspen, willows, and camas thrived in the meadow. Several groups of indigenous people, including Shasta, Latgawa, and Takelma, likely harvested camas and other foods, gathered seeds, and managed the land with fire.

To slow the erosion along Latgawa Creek, Moy and an army of volunteers immediately started planting willows. Willow planting is a time-honored restoration strategy, and you don’t need a permit to plant them.

But Moy wanted to do more.

“The waterway being so degraded and showcased with the highway running through it lends itself to being a restoration demonstration site,” she explains.

Moy quickly honed in on bringing beavers back to Vesper Meadow. Not only do beaver-managed landscapes support a variety of plants, animals, and pollinators, they also help buffer the land during droughts and can even slow down or stop a wildfire.

But you can’t just drop a bunch of beavers off in a dry meadow, says Koenigsberg. “There’s no food. They’d starve, or get eaten by predators.” First, you have to set the table.

As long as the highway is bringing people closer, you might as well educate them. Right?

After talking with experts from The Beaver Coalition and NOAA, Moy decided to use a low-tech strategy called process-based restoration. It doesn’t require heavy equipment or engineering degrees, just lots of human hands. She started planning the log structures in the summer of 2020.

Sheri Hagwood, Partners for Fish and Wildlife botanist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, suggested Moy apply for funding and technical assistance through the Partners for Fish and Wildlife program, which helps private landowners enhance their properties for wildlife.

Vesper Meadow received $36,000 through the Partners program (and matched it with over $37,000). Hagwood helped Moy with planning and permitting. To build the structures, she needed to obtain a host of permits from federal, state, and county agencies, which evaluate everything from water quality to the project’s impact on cultural resources.

Moy bumped into the FEMA requirement when applying to Jackson County for a floodplain development permit. Part of the meadow was a FEMA mapped flood zone. An engineering analysis showed that during a hypothetical “100-year” flood, her project would raise the water level in one part of this zone by 8 inches, which the county didn’t allow.

According to Moy, the flood map didn’t match what was actually on the ground. Her only course of action was to apply to FEMA to revise the map and show that no homes or other buildings would be threatened by her project.

“The whole FEMA process is in place to protect homeowners from flooding, but there are no other homes anywhere near this floodplain,” says Moy. “It just seemed excessive for us to be able to put some sticks in the creek.”

She used part of her budget to hire an engineer to map and analyze the creek. Finally, last November, they mailed the application to FEMA.

After a few months, she followed up. FEMA had never received her materials. She sent them again. For the next several months, the FEMA representative and her engineer went back and forth with requests and revisions. With the weather window for building the log structures closing, Moy planned Beaver Days.

First you build it and then get out of the way and then they will come. Let them be in charge of the process from there.

It’s humbling to admit that a rodent can do this work better than we can, says Koenigsburg. “This kind of restoration challenges human nature,” she adds. “We like control and we don’t like messy. But we’re at this turning point: Do we want control, or do we want water, biodiversity, and firebreaks?”

Moy’s plan is not to hand the meadow off to beavers and leave. A key part of her programming is to restore human presence to Vesper Meadow, using art, education, science, and hands-on work to draw people in. Vesper Meadow helped cofound the Indigenous Gardens Network and has invited Siletz and Grande Ronde tribal members to re-connect with a landscape their ancestors knew intimately.

“More and more I use the term bio-cultural restoration,” says Moy. “It’s not just humans visiting and restoring and measuring [Vesper Meadow] but rather building personal relationships with the land and tending it over time.”

And scene. Vesper meadows is in good hands because of the beavers work and your vision. Well done. Thanks to the beaver coalition for helping out.