Artificial Beaver Dams – A Visual Tour of Triple Creek
Triple Creek Restoration on Myers Creek, near Chesaw, Washington.
The video producers report, “Mimicking beaver dams, we installed vertical wood posts as a foundation and then weaved together dogwood, willow, and maple to create artificial (analog) beaver dams. The purpose was to help raise an eroded stream bed and reconnect it to its ancient floodplain. This has worked.”
These ideas would also work on many Texas ranches, where water shortages are a perennial problem.
It’s amazing what a relatively small amount of work will do to reverse man made damage and how quickly it can occur. With all the fires and floods in the west lately it would seem an appropriate time to do a little thinning of over grown forests and incorporate the harvested material into a few thousand BDA’s. Thanks for the great film.
Thank you Scott.
In the short run mechanical manipulation to remove brush, dead trees and overcrowded growth is necessary. All that stuff should be ground up and left as chips or sawdust. All the forest creatures large and small must be restored if we want the forests to be well again. Beavers can play a huge role in repairing forest hydrology.
Most importantly, forest managers must start thinking holistically: this will be the most difficult challenge of all.