Scientists know beavers create landscapes better adapted to climate change. Here’s what they’re doing in ecosystems too degraded to support the critters.
Jordan Nielson with Trout Unlimited gives a tour of their project along Mud Creek that flows into Scofield Reservoir where 75 BDAs were installed with a partnership with the EPA and Utah Division of Water Quality, Aug. 16, 2023.As Jordan Nielson tromped through recovering pastureland around Mud Creek, his boots occasionally got sucked into the soil, still saturated in the waning days of summer. It’s exactly what he wanted to see.
The wetlands also turn the creek’s surrounding banks into a sponge, recharging groundwater so it slowly releases downstream throughout the season, flowing from Schofield to the Price River and, eventually, the Colorado River. Mud Creek has been heavily grazed for generations, so there are no trees or willows — the things beavers like to eat and use to build their homes. The idea is the BDAs will create the meadows and wetlands growing those kinds of things, and a fence around the creek means cows can’t munch them back down again.
“But that’s because I hired crews to come in and build them for me,” he said. “We’ve done smaller projects where we bring volunteers to help us build and they’re much, much less. You’re talking a couple hundred bucks a structure.”Utah State University professor and fluvial geomorphologist Joe Wheaton helped develop the method and coined the term “beaver dam analog” in 2009 while working on a project to restore steelhead salmon habitat in Oregon.
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