Today is a good day to go on vacation to the ocean, don’t you think? (Not vacation from you of course, because the internet can follow wherever I go and people need to start their day always with beavers.) Apparently its fall here but it’s going to be clear skies and sunny in Mendocino all week so we’ll live like kings. It’s one of those destinations that you love every part of, the drive through the redwoods, the snaking coastline, the white buildings, the rustic grocery store, even buying gas is delight. Good time to start the day right with some excellent news from Idaho.
Landowners and conservation professionals are excited about a new type of woody structure that mimics beaver dams. The benefits are similar — they store water, slow down runoff in streams, and enhance fish and wildlife habitat.
They’re called beaver dam analogs.
Bruneau Rancher Chris Black worked together with a number of conservation professionals to install some BDAs on his private land on Hurry Up Creek, a tributary of Deep Creek.
“I’ve wanted to get beaver in here for years but it is an ephemeral stream,” Black said. “There’s enough willows to make good food for them and everything, but there isn’t enough water for them to stay.”
They’ve put in about 10 structures so far, and more are planned in the future.
People all over are getting excited about BDAs. How excited? I woke up to an email from Norway sending me Joe Wheaton’s River restoration manual about them! There are plenty of places that are never sure about beavers but like the idea of BDAs, Maybe it’s just the hydraulic post installer. Boys like toys, don’t ya know.
“They came in and put them in very successfully,” he says. “They’re backing water up, they’re creating habitat for spotted frogs, for sage grouse, for beaver.”
Conservation professionals with the Governor’s Office of Species Conservation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Idaho Department of Fish and Game and the Natural Resources Conservation Service are all interested in exploring the benefits of using BDAs to improve riparian habitat and store water.
“It just benefits a whole host of wildlife species and that’s why Fish and Game is really interested in this,” Chris Yarbrough, Fish and Game habitat biologist said. “It’s a low-cost way to get a lot of bang for your conservation buck.”
Oh yes it is. It’s called trickledown ecology. And beavers do it very, very well.
“I think it will benefit sage grouse in terms of expanding the sponge, that green line of habitat will bring in the sage grouse, and have more of a grocery cart for them when they come to the store, if we provide more of a green line for them, it’ll help during late brood season,” Uriate said.The Hawley Creek project is far more complex in many respects. With about 25 BDAs in place, it’s been turned into a perennial stream. But the objectives of the project are similar — to improve habitat for fish and wildlife and work toward providing season-long flows for endangered salmon, steelhead and resident fish.Hawley Creek is a tributary of the Lemhi River near Leadore at an elevation of 6,000 feet. The project has a major irrigation component for ranchers who have long-time water rights on the stream. Daniel Bertram with the Governor’s Office for Species Conservation in Salmon spent several years planning the project to make sure it worked for everyone.
The article also mentions that a project like this took TWO YEARS of negotiations to coordinate with the many farmers and ranchers who were worried that beavers were going to come ruin their streams and steal their water. I really, really believe that. Work like this takes enormous patience and a vision that looks long term.
“By slowing this water down, spreading it out, you can just see the response from the vegetation, the grass growing up, I can hear the grasshoppers in the background, passerines have just exploded, all of the wildlife species and insects have just exploded,” Bertram says. “And we’re already seeing brood-rearing sage grouse coming into this area and utilizing it in the short period we’ve been here. It’s been a huge success story for them, and I’m excited to see how the leks respond over time.”
Ultimately, Black likes the strength of multiple partners working together to improve wildlife habitat.
“With all of us coming together, we can create great leaps in conservation, with money and time, and it all comes together,” Black says. “Everyone’s working together, and it becomes a great story for how we can manage these lands in the future.”
Alright. Excellent work. May your streams have beavers soon and for many years to come. And may no one trap them for their fur because they are very very useful alive.
Yesterday, stickermule sent ANOTHER offer this time for for very cheap bumperstickers, so of course I had to start the vacation early. What do you think?
