Winter storm debris, helicopter, beavers help repair Casper area tributary
Keith Schoup and Pete Garrett are an unusual duo. Schoup is a habitat biologist for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. Garrett is a rancher outside of Casper. Historically, practitioners in their respective fields have seldom seen eye-to-eye. But the two struck up a working relationship in the early 1990s and have been performing experimental projects to improve environments for wild species and livestock ever since.
Their latest project had two objectives: keeping the North Platte River healthy and improving the quality of grazing lands on Garrett’s ranch by building dams made of debris from Winter Storm Atlas.
By using a helicopter, beavers and 50 tons of tree debris left in the wake of the October snowstorms, the duo is hoping to transform the bare riparian habitat along Bolton Creek into terrain studded with cottonwood trees, grass and a thriving beaver population. The synergy of effects should reduce erosion in the creek, block sediment from the North Platte and keep fish populations healthy.
This is so close to being a good story. Ranchers and biologists partnering with beavers to restore a creek in the back country. Resources being invested to expand the beaver population rather than deplete it. It is situated so closely beside actual ‘good news’ that lots of ill-informed people might not recognize how woefully misguided it actually is. Like a library located next to a strip joint. Or a teen pregnancy clinic right beside a all-night Chevy drive in. This gets a lot of things right – but many more wrong.
The city was quick to oblige when Game and Fish asked if it could remove some of the animals from the area, she said. “We’re in an urban area, we’re not going back to the wilderness,” Martinez said. “There are things we can do to cohabitate.”
First of all, if you make something move out, you’re not co-habitating with it. (Look it up). Obviously they got rid of a problem, so they were happy to help out. All they had to do was scoop up some of those rats with a snare, pile them into a big net which we could fly by helicopter into an empty field, and then drop them into the water. Of course we didn’t relocate families together. Why do you ask? If a bunch of strange beavers kill each other for territory, die from internal bleeding or starve to death without families, its still a win win for us.
For the project to be successful, Schoup and Garrett are hoping Mother Nature will take its course. Over time a line of beaver dams should form and allow for slower water flows in the creek that will help to reduce sediment levels in the North Platte. The dams should also help to periodically flood the creek’s riparian habitat.
The city of Casper organized piles of the debris at the compost center. Game and Fish trucks picked up the material and drove it to Garrett’s land off Wyoming Highway 487. “It was great to see everybody work together,” said Sean Orszulak, superintendent of solid waste for the city.
In the second week of November, a helicopter dumped hundreds of 1,500-pound loads of branches along the carved banks of Bolton Creek. The wood will serve as the foundations for the dams and food for a population of beavers introduced to the area by Game and Fish.
No word yet on what these dumped engineers are supposed to EAT after their days of labor. I guess they are welcome to gnaw the bark off that pile of old sticks and roots if they wish. But of course its 38 degrees in Wyoming today, so that tiny creek will be frozen in a fortnight. I wonder what they’ll eat then?
Never mind. The relocated beavers may starve. But the mountain lions, wolves, bobcats and coyotes will live like kings!
