And if you can’t get there in person, get there in spirit by reading this:
Partnering With Beavers To Restore Degraded Streams Aiding Recovery Of Wild Steelhead
On Bridge Creek, a tributary to the John Day River in eastern Oregon, scientists with NOAA Fisheries’ National Marine Fisheries Service are installing a series of structures as part of a unique, low-cost approach to stream restoration.
The simple structures provide footholds in the degraded stream channel where beaver can build stable dams and establish colonies. By partnering with the beaver, the scientists hope to accelerate stream recovery and improve production of the creek’s wild steelhead population, which is part of a larger steelhead population listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The simple, cost-effective treatment being applied on Bridge Creek could have far-reaching applications in the Columbia River Basin.
“Bridge Creek is typical of many degraded streams in the western United States,” says Michael Pollock, biologist with NMFS’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center. The creek has been confined to a narrow, incised trench, and high flows rarely reach its former floodplain. One of the main ways to improve habitat conditions in this situation is to reconnect the stream with its former floodplain. This helps restore basic geomorphic, hydrologic and ecological functions, and, in turn, create better habitat for steelhead.”
Make sure you go read the whole thing! Be kind to the earth today, and for the second anniversary of the gulf oil spill, and the soul crushing burden of how depressing it is that we now have shrimp born without eyes, let’s watch this again. When I couldn’t sleep last night I was trying to imagine how columns of this elixir under the ocean could help pick up all that missing oil two years later.
