Help build a home for Seaside beavers

SEASIDE – Join the North Coast Land Conservancy (NCLC) Saturday Morning Stewardship volunteers from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, Feb. 23, to help build safe homes for the North Oregon Coast’s best construction engineers – beavers. At the NCLC’s 80-acre Thompson Creek-Stanley Marsh property in Seaside, beavers are playing a key role in restoring ecological balance to the creek and surrounding wetlands. Thanks in no small part to the beaver’s good work, Thompson Creek now supports the largest run of native coastal coho salmon for a stream its size on the North Oregon coast.

You dream about things like this. You imagine the day over and over again in your head, making a scrap book of your crazy hopes so you can glance at it when you get discouraged. You pretend each day that maybe a glimmer like this will someday come around the corner. You hardly need a whiff on the horizon to keep you going. But nothing prepares you for this. Nothing.

In the fall of 2012, volunteers created habitat for resident beaver colonies at Stanley Marsh by providing foundation points for dam construction in Ditch Creek, excavating old pasture to create permanent wetland habitat, and building beaver kit houses to provide denning habitat for beaver families. During the upcoming work party, work will continue to add the finishing touches to the beaver kit houses by planting and stacking willows around the openings and walls of the lodges and plant additional wetland scrub-shrub species to provide food and shelter habitat for beavers.

Volunteers making stater homes for beavers. Planting trees to encourage them. Dam assembly kits where its easier to get traction. The North Coast Land Conservancy is a smart, savvy and very effective group of river keepers. Go check out their website if you want a reminder on how to do it right. And if you have cousins or uncles in Oregon tell them to turn out to help this Saturday!