One Dam at a Time

By Bella Biondini - Staff Writer for the Gunnison Country Times

Gunnison Ranger District hosts beaver dam building day 

The newly rewetted land made a satisfying squelch underneath rubber boots as volunteers walked upstream. The small creek wove through the basin down toward the mountains, but something was missing. 

Although the area was once a lush wetland, the vegetation was dry and the flowing water was restricted to a single channel. Volunteers were hard at work, hoping to lure back an animal that had the ability to restore the riparian landscape — the beaver. 

In partnership with the Forest Service, High Country Conservation Advocates (HCCA) co-hosted a volunteer day to complete stream restoration work by constructing beaver dams at Trail Creek, an area that beavers once called home. 

Funded by the National Forest Foundation, organizations from across the Valley came together to get their hands muddy to make it happen. 

Returning water to the area would bring up the water table, increase the area’s resilience to drought and bring back other wildlife that depend on wetlands, said U.S. Forest Service Hydrologist Ashley Hom. Standing in the creek in her waders, she shoveled grass and mud onto the new dam structure. 

“When we look at historical photos and Google imagery, beavers were here 10 years ago,” Hom said. “And we don't quite know why, but they've largely evacuated this area. They're actually very close but as to why they're not utilizing this area, we’re really not sure.” 

The team wove willows and sticks around wooden stakes, filling in the gaps with dirt and gravel to mimic beaver dams. After the structures were complete and the flow was halted, the water spread, pooling onto the surrounding land. 

“With these beaver dams, we're hoping to entice the beaver to come here because we’ve kind of jump started their process by giving them deep water to hide in from predators, giving them places to cash food, which is in the deep water under the ice when ice comes in,” Hom said. 

Beaver structures push the water out into the historic floodplain, but their absence causes the area to dewater. 

There are no beavers damming the water, so the conductivity between the stream bed and the floodplain has been lost, Hom said, motioning to empty beaver channels once filled with water. Over time, the willows will dry out and transition to sage and the wetland complex will disappear. 

The man-made dam structures they created are only meant to last from one to five years, and will wash out over time.

But if the beavers return to the area, Hom said she hopes the critters will maintain the dams or build their own. Volunteers are building dams exactly where old beavers dams used to exist, as part of the mimicry. 

“The more you mimic nature, the more likely you are to get it right,” Hom said. 

HCCA has been making more room for community members to get involved with on the ground stewardship, said Eli Smith, an environmental stewardship fellow at HCCA. 

“It takes a lot of human power to actually do this,” Smith said. “We are looking to get more community members involved in the area where they live so that they can feel that sense of connection.” 

The team had already accomplished more than they thought they could during the week as they prepared to finish their last day of work on Friday. During phase one of the project, their target was to build 20 dams. At noon, they neared 30. Next year they hope to return for phase two, working toward their goal of 60 dams.

The Sustainable Tourism and Outdoor Recreation Committee also assisted with the project. Crew member Matthew Merrit said his favorite thing about being out in the field is the instant gratification of their work.

“The water level itself runs right around your boot and then by the time that you're done with one of these it can be up to around your waist,” Merritt said. “Then it starts to spread out and fill all these old beaver channels from back in the day. So it's like you're seeing your work, just be done in front of you.”

Mark Beardsley, a restoration ecologist at EcoMetrics, has been doing this kind of work for almost 20 years. He grabbed a handful of willows and packed them down onto the top of the newly made dam.

“What we're doing is trying to restore the wetland condition, or wetland health to this reach,” Beardsley said. “Trail Creek is one of probably thousands of miles of streams in this condition in the area or in the state.”

About a mile upstream around the bend near his camp, Beardsley said the beavers were busy working on their own dams. A moose came and greeted them in the early morning hours. 

“It makes you want to work harder out here,” he said.

Historically, beavers were a common sight, but they were largely extirpated from most of North America during the fur trade in the 1700s and 1800s. The beavers have been slow to return because these areas were heavily used for ranching, he said. 

“We are basically mimicking what beavers would do if they were here on this site to repair it, to raise the water level back up, get it spread around and make the wetlands wet again,” Beardsley said.