Lovely article this morning from Telluride Magazine in Colorado. You can all those years of Sherri Tippie advocacy paid off in sooo many ways.
Bring Back the Beaver
As Colorado and the rest of the Southwest grapple with the effects of an ongoing, twenty-two-year drought, scientists are turning to beavers for help restoring moisture to the land.
“If you had visited Telluride a thousand years ago, it would have been an insane wetland with wildlife and birds everywhere, because of the beaver,” says Adrian Bergere, Executive Director of the San Miguel Watershed Coalition.
Now, southwestern Colorado is experiencing the longest stretch of drought in more than a thousand years, and the effects of water’s absence is being felt throughout the land. Rivers are shrinking and reservoirs are reaching record lows, and the dwindling water supply for agriculture is reducing farmers’ crops to a fraction of the normal yield. “Before, we had beaver dams,” says Bergere. “But we decided to remove the beavers and tried to replace their work with a system of man-made dams, and it’s not working well.”
No it sure isn’t. You got my attention Telluride. Now send the message home.
The San Miguel Watershed Coalition and other Western conservation groups are working with public lands managers and private landowners to increase beaver populations in Western rivers with the hope their busy work can help recharge groundwater systems and restore water to the land. “Now we’re in drought times and need nature-based solutions. We’re looking at climate-related issues and environmental issues asking: What in nature is not there anymore?”
Some beaver are still present in all stretches of the San Miguel River, from the alpine headwaters above Telluride to the river’s confluence with the Dolores River, some eighty miles below and 7,000 feet lower in elevation. The river travels through ranching and farming communities in Norwood and Naturita before it reaches the red rock desert near the Utah border. “Given half a chance they will repopulate areas where they used to exist.”
Because beaver are still widespread in the watershed, Bergere and other scientists believe there is an opportunity for successful watershed restoration work in the San Miguel. “Let’s bring them back and give them a helping hand.”
Well well well. I want to register my FULL approval of this plan. Not so much the moving beavers around the landscape part, but the LETTING THEM STAY when they move in and recognizing what an asset they are!
According to Bergere, it’s the imperfect nature of beaver dams that makes them work so well in the environment. “They recharge groundwater, trap sediment, and create ephemeral ponds that eventually fill in. Then the beaver move to the next spot, find a good site for a lodge or dam and start the cycle over again, creating a healthy landscape for storing water.”
Without beaver dams, the snowpack rages out faster, and rainwater rushes down streams and riverbeds with no impediments to collect and distribute it across the landscape for farming. The rushing water gouges out streambeds, and the incised streams become disconnected from the floodplain with no associated riparian corridor or wetlands. “Sometimes you think of rivers and wetlands as separate things, but they’re really not.”
The fast-moving water creates banks so steep that the beavers can’t get into them, and the streams become so overcharged that their work gets blown away. “It’s bad for sediment, bad for water quality, and bad for the aquatic, terrestrial and bird species that we love.”
Oh I am super loving this article. I almost get nervous when articles about beavers are too perfect. I read them with this sense of dread that I will soon be disappointed. But this is pretty good.
Bergere says it’s best to install not just one beaver dam analog by itself, but to plan for several in an area that would be suitable habitat for beaver to reinstate a colony in that tributary or section of stream. “Beavers will adopt the structures and start building their own, so if yours get blown out, it does not really matter because the beavers have now gotten a foothold to reestablish themselves, and will do the restoration work for you.”
Beaver dams benefit tree species, too. When beaver cut trees like willow down, it’s just like propagating a house plant in your home: some cuttings stay and regrow and some go downstream, and recreate more healthy willow populations. “We’re replicating what beavers do. With any luck the natural processes will take it from there.”
In an area where there are no beaver dams or beaver populations are low due to human conflict, you can still gain the benefits of dams without beavers by installing beaver dam analogs. “There’s no guarantee beaver will come back to your property. But if you are out in the desert or ranchland, you can still do this mimicry or analog work to gain their benefits and create wetlands on the land.”
Ummm just first swear to God that you won’t use our funding and volunteers to install a beaver dam analog and then hire a trapper when a real beaver tries to move in, okay??? Can you just sign this contract in blood please?
This year, San Miguel Water Coalition is joining forces with the national non-profit American Rivers to expand their beaver restoration work further into the San Miguel watershed. The groups are looking for landowners to partner with, who are interested in working together with beaver to restore environmental, ecological and aesthetic values to the river and land. “Ranchers across the west have adopted these nature-based restoration techniques and are seeing water supplies last up to six weeks longer into the dry season.”
So far, the Coalition has identified eleven sites for beaver dam analogs in the San Miguel Watershed, and Bergere says the list is growing. “Fish, birds, elk, deer…it’s really remarkable what happens when you spread water across the floodplain. If you want a natural wetland complex with ponds on your landscape, this is the most cost-effective way to do it. Restore a natural grade, the beaver adopts the structure, and takes it from there.”
