Beaver Library

Beaver are ecosystem engineers capable of converting free-flowing lotic habitats into a series of lentic ponds, thereby enhancing the wetland area of a riverscape. Process-based riverscape restoration using beaver reintroductions and mimicry (beaver dam analogues, BDAs) are increasingly used to restore  functions, the provisioning of services, and improve the resiliency of ecosystems across North America and Europe. Beaver can create breeding habitat for a wide range of species within the highly imperilled class Amphibia by increasing wetland area, increasing emergent vegetation, prolonging wetland hydroperiod, and creating deep ponds.

Reducing nutrient runoff in streams is an important task to reduce algae blooms and associated environmental damage in large waterbodies. Beaver Dam Analogs (WTBDA) are an means to address this problem. These Water Tight Beaver Dam Analogs (WTBDA) present a novel approach to this technique that also aim to restore eroded seasonal creeks to perennial wetlands.

Traditional restoration efforts are barely scratching the surface of what could be restored. Moreover, a disproportionate amount of funds are spent on too few miles of streams and rivers leaving millions of miles of degraded streams neglected. To fill this gap, restoration practitioners are increasingly trying restoration techniques that are more cost?effective, less intensive, and can more practically scale up to the enormous scope of degradation.

We have developed and implemented a simple approach that emulates the ecosystem engineering effects of beaver. This approach is less expensive and disruptive than typical large-scale engineering efforts and has the potential to restore both fish habitat and floodplain vegetation more rapidly than simply revegetating and waiting for the riparian zone to mature.  (Pg 246 – 255)

Artificial beaver dams are a hot restoration strategy, but the projects aren’t always welcome.

Study to gather and produce human dimensions-inclusive, basin-centralized beaver knowledge through an explorative, benefits-maximizing approach to landscape-scale BAR opportunities assessment in the Salinas River.

In this study, we tracked beaver dam distributions and monitored water temperature throughout 34 km of stream for an eight-year period between 2007 and 2014. Our results suggest that creation of natural and/or artificial beaver dams could be used to mitigate the impact of human induced thermal degradation that may threaten sensitive species.

Description of the design process for two types of low-tech structures, post-assisted log structures (PALS) and beaver dam analogues (BDAs).

Low-tech stream restoration gains using beaver dam mimicry gains popularity as an effective fix for ailing waterways in the American West.

The Low-Tech Process Based Restoration of Riverscapes Pocket Guide is an illustrated and condensed version of the Design Manual. The pocket guide is designed to fit in your pocket (4 x 6”) to use as a reference in the field. 2019.

Jeff Burrell with the Wildlife Conservation Society with demonstrates how installing inexpensive woody debris in streams to mimic beaver dams can encourage beaver damming to mitigate the negative effects of  less snow melt summer runoff due to climate change in Montana streams.

The goal of this project is to test whether a restoration method developed and tested in Bridge Creek, Oregon will be suitable for restoring streams like Pataha Creek in southeast Washington.

Idaho rancher, Jay Wilde, and Joe Wheaton from Utah State University use BRAT, beaver restoration assessment tool, and identified good beaver habitat to help restore Birch Creek to year-round stream flow.

Idaho rancher, Jay Wilde, partnered with Anabranch Solutions to build BDAs, and the USFS and Idaho Fish & Game to relocate beavers into Birch Creek to help restore year-round stream flow.

Survey that identifies a need to assess beaver-related restoration projects in western rangelands to increase
awareness, accountability, and to identify gaps in scientific knowledge.

This first webinar in the Association of State Wetland Managers (ASWM) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) co-hosted six-part webinar series on beaver restoration details how beaver affect the land and the hydrologic impacts from loss of beaver through various hunting, trapping and removal activities. The webinar shared the role that beavers and beaver dam analogs (BDAs) can play in stream restoration.

This second webinar in the ASWM-BLM Beaver Restoration Webinar Series focuses on making decisions about where beaver restoration and/or the use of beaver dam analogs (BDA) can have the greatest positive and least negative impacts. It includes a demonstration of Utah State University’s Beaver Restoration Assessment Tool (BRAT), a model that helps planners assess key parameters essential to beaver work.

This third webinar in the ASWM-BLM Beaver Restoration Webinar Series focused on the long-term changes in riverscapes that result from beaver restoration.  Where intense stream restoration is needed, people are identifying low-tech process-based methods that combine the management of grazing, beaver and other approaches that engage processes to create self-sustaining solutions.

The final webinar in the ASWM-BLM Beaver Restoration Webinar Series showcases research which indicates that beavers are able to create and maintain wetlands resistant to both seasonal and multiyear droughts and that this landscape wetting and drought buffering goes on to reduce or prevent burning in wildfire. Perhaps instead of relying solely on human engineering and management to create and maintain fire?resistant landscape patches, we could benefit from beaver’s ecosystem engineering to achieve the same goals at a lower cost.