Let’s face it. 2020 has been the poop-flavored popsicle of a year. It’s been the annus horriblis that gave us Covid, no beaver festival an the zombie election that wouldn’t die. But there are some bright spots. And this tuesday’s article from Farm and Ranch might just be the brightest spot we’ve ever seen.
Preston rancher restoring beaver to creek
Preston Rancher Jay Wilde had a dream – to restore beavers to Birch Creek.His goal was to make Birch Creek a perennial stream. And provide water – for his cattle and horses.But each time he released beavers – on his own nickel – they vanished.
“They didn’t stay. They didn’t survive or the predators got them, we don’t know,” Wilde says. “It got pretty obvious to me that I didn’t know what I was doing. As far as restoring beaver.”
Then, Jay met Joe Wheaton from Utah State University. A professor of Watershed Sciences, Wheaton specializes in using beavers and low-tech woody structures to restore streams.“They have a model called BRAT, beaver restoration assessment tool, and that identified good beaver habitat. How many dams would be supported by the habitat that’s here,” Wilde says. “I thought, finally, I’ve knocked on the right door.”
Wheaton came up to visit Jay right away to do a BRAT analysis of Birch Creek with colleague, Nick Bouwes, a professor of watershed sciences at Utah State.
“The core of it, is a capacity model,” Wheaton says. “It looks at the vegetation that’s present, and asks the question about its suitability as a dam-building material, and hydrology. Simple way to put it, beavers need water and wood.”
The BRAT analysis predicted that beavers might build 25-60 dams per mile.
Can’t you just tell this is going to be the VERY BEST ARTICLE! They should make the whole thing into a hallmark channel movie and show it every christmas. I friggin’ LOVE this story.
“Largely that’s because there’s a ton of aspen, cottonwood, other species present that they like to use for building dams,” Wheaton says.
Turns out the beavers loved Birch Creek canyon! Following the release of 9 beavers in the first two years of the project, there are over 175 beaver dams in Birch Creek five years later.
This is a story where dreams can come true. Jay Wilde showed a great deal of grit and tenacity in bringing beavers back to Birch Creek. A big silver lining is that his grand-daughter, Emily, participated in the whole project from the beginning, dating back to her high school years.
“We used to come up here every summer when I was a kid,” Emily Wilde says. “First thing, me and my sister would come up and play in the creek for hours on end, find all the bugs, and all the plants that we could. When I was 14, I understood that this is what I wanted to do, spend my life playing in the creek.”
So what could be better than restoring a creek with beaver?
“I thought it was an interesting opportunity to learn something new, expand my knowledge and find out what I wanted to do when I grew up,” she says.
Emily, right, and her sister loved to play in Birch Creek when they were young girls. Emily is a junior at Utah State University now, majoring in natural resources.
I love this. I JUST LOVE it. I can’t even find parts of the article to excerpt that I love the most because I love every single paragraph! Pinch me someone. I’m dreaming.
Jay invited key Forest Service people to meet with Wheaton to understand the potential. Wheaton suggested that they build several beaver dam analogs in Birch Creek to test out the concept. Nick Bouwes agreed.
But first they would need approval from the Forest Service – as the BDAs would be located on Caribou-Targhee National Forest land – and stream-alteration permits from the Idaho Department of Water Resources and Army Corps of Engineers.
Brett Roper, National Aquatic Monitoring Program Leader for the Forest Service, and a watershed scientist who teaches at Utah State, helped with the Forest Service environmental approval process.
“Brett got involved, and he said he’d put his neck on the line, and got them to sign off on a categorical exemption through NEPA,” Wheaton says.
And Brad Higginson, a Caribou-Targhee hydrologist, helped push the IDWR and Corps permits through in record time.
They built four BDA’s that fall, using a $3,000 grant from the Forest Service for building materials. Jay and Emily pitched in, along with Casey Wilde, Emily’s Dad and Jay’s son, and Nick Bouwes.
In 2016, they built 15 more BDA’s on Birch Creek, while Jeremy Maestas from the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) held a stream-restoration educational workshop on site. The workshop, sponsored by USDA-NRCS Working Lands for Wildlife, brought together about 40 agency biologists and engineers from around the West to learn about low-tech restoration, Maestas said.
The BDAs created inviting habitat for the beavers, Wheaton says. “They were built as a comfortable release site for the beavers, so they weren’t freaked out. And we expected them to behave like teen-agers so we wanted to have choices for them upstream and downstream. Maybe they’ll use one of those, and indeed, they did.”
Honestly I am lapping this up like a cat. And you should be too. Where can we make more Jays and dot them around the countryside like vaccines. Two in every state. Five in California and Texas.
“It’s been so fun to watch all the changes. So many positive things have happened – things I never dreamed of,” Jay Wilde says.
Forest Service officials are excited about the positive changes, too.
“So these beaver dams, they do a lot for streamflow, and they do great deal for fish habitat,” says Brad Higginson, a hydrologist for the Caribou-Targhee National Forest. “As you can see, Birch Creek before was maybe 2 feet wide and a couple of inches deep. Now you can see how deep it is, and the amount of fish that would be these ponds.”
“Another thing these beaver dams do, is they elevate the water table,” Higginson continues. “So you see a lot of storage in the channel. What you don’t see is the storage that’s underneath the land. Now, you have all of that storage that occurs during spring runoff, where there’s excess water available, and in the later summer and early fall, that water continues to feed the stream, which helps the stream flow all year long.”
So far, Birch Creek is flowing for 40-plus days longer than it did pre-beaver.
Moose are among the many species of wildlife that like the extensive wet meadow habitat created on Birch Creek. (Courtesy Emily Wilde)
Wet meadow habitat around the beaver dams diversifies the habitat for insects and birds around the stream.
Fish life has rebounded in a big way, too.
“They’re Bonneville cutthroat trout, a really pure strain,” Emily Wilde says. “So it was really important to make sure they’re doing well. I did a fish count with the Forest Service, and we caught 132 fish in this pond.”
“You get pretty excited to see something this big, it’s just shallow scrappy habitat, they’re just scraping by. And we’ve gone from a fish density of 5 fish 100 meters to somewhere around 70,” Wheaton says.
Adds Lee Mabey, a fisheries biologist for the Caribou-Targhee National Forest, “It’s like a 10- to 20-fold increase in fish out there. Fish need water but they also need habitat. The beaver ponds, they provide a lot of habitat complexity that the stream alone itself doesn’t provide — over-wintering areas, holding areas, deep-water areas, they increase the productivity of insects which means more food for the fish, all the little edge-water habitat, little beaver channels, provide a lot of nursery-type habitat for young fish.”
Color me Happy. Color me tickled pink. Honestly it really shouldn’t be better when a rancher says “beavers are good” than when some tree hugger from California like me does but it is. You know it is.
Jay Wilde’s excellent land stewardship and grazing management also made the beaver project a success, officials said.
“I can’t underscore enough how important it was that good grazing management was a pre-curser to this story,” Wheaton says. “There’s a lot of places where we go to work, and you look at the riparian, and you’ve got to fix the grazing management first. Here, that had been done, and done so well, it makes it really easy to look good.”
Jay Wilde pays close attention to how he manages his cattle. He follows the Allan Savory technique of intensive grazing with excellent results.
Jay follows the Allan Savory system of grazing management, using intensive cattle grazing on small pastures for a short period of time, and then moving on to the next pasture. He shows us an example.
“I grazed this earlier this spring, and we grazed it down really close,” he says. “And this is the recovery we’ve got.”
The vibrant grass growth on Jay’s private land stands in contrast to a different property owner to the north, and Forest Service land to the east.
“We’ve been able to make it look like this without doing any seeding, chemical treatments, it’s all been done by the way we manage the range.”
Jay uses temporary solar fence to create small pastures, and he rotates the cattle to new pastures frequently throughout the grazing season.
I hope Santa is being extra extra nice to Jay this Christmas. And Joe Wheaton. And Emily Wilde. And all the merry men and women at the forest service who made this possible. And the author of this article too who deserves special attention. Steve Stuebner we are loving you too.
Jay closely monitors the range. A series of photo-monitoring pictures shows how Birch Creek has recovered from 2001-2010. At last count, there are more than 165 beaver dams in the Birch Creek watershed.
“It’s been a dream come true for me,” Wilde says.
Jay and Joe Wheaton have held numerous show-me educational tours in the area.
Beavers aren’t perfect; they need to be managed, Wilde points out, but they have a role to play as a keystone species.
“I grew up here hating beaver, always getting in irrigation ditches, one thing or the other, creating problems. That was the mentality back then,” Wilde says.
“We have to think of beavers as our friend instead of our foe,” he continues. “It’s what you have to call a paradigm shift. There’s a lot of people who changed their mind. They decided for these watersheds to be healthy, you need beaver.”
Now Wheaton takes Jay on the road for educational workshops about restoring streams. There’s a big need for more stream-restoration projects, and it’s a powerful thing for landowners to lead the way.
“I would love to replicate Jay’s story thousands of times over,” Wheaton says. “Jay has turned into a dear friend. He and I have done workshops in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, and Idaho. Jay, telling the story, to his neighbors, to other ranchers, this is what it means to him and his operation, it’s been huge, it’s inspired a lot of people.”
“I think there’s a chance that this will start growing really quickly,” adds Emily Wilde. “It’s incredible easy to implement. It can be pretty widespread if you want it to be.”
Ohh be still my heart. I love this. I love every single sentence and and quote. I love the punctuaton. Who ever you’re friends with that can NOT understand for the life of them why you’re so crazy about beavers, send them this.
The first time the “Bioneers” conference appeared on this website was 2010. In 2009 Brock Dolman had presented and mentioned the importance of beavers. It was surprising news at the time. But it is mainstream today. Because that’s the way change happens, slowly at first, and then all at once.
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