August/September 2022

Montana Beaver Working Group
Connecting people and sharing resources to advance the beaver's keystone role
in watershed health

Photo Credit: Rob Rich

Stories and News

With two large pickups and a trailer brimming with willows, these dedicated volunteers and BLM staff are part of the team that is building a bright future for beavers and healthy grassland habitats in north-central Montana. Photo Credit: Morgan Marks

Restoring Emerald Islands: Collaborative Conservation at Work


In late July under the garish heat of north-central Montana, volunteers assisted NWF, Montana Wildlife Federation, and BLM in gathering willow for a riparian restoration project funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and National Wild Turkey Federation. These semi-arid landscapes historically supported communities of box elder, willow, and cottonwood, along with their mammalian ecosystem partner who propagated them, the beaver. As land use practices altered watersheds and beaver were trapped out of these systems, water itself became more scarce, impairing the hydrologic, geologic, and biologic functions essential to survival in the American West. But as collaborative conservation efforts strengthen, the narrative of dry, eroding streams in the Missouri River grasslands is starting to change.


Volunteers staged willow at two project sites, Rose Creek and Reed Coulee, both just south of the Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument. This year is phase two of the restoration work, and crews from Anabranch Solutions, LLC began building beaver dam analogues in early August. With deft willow weaving between posts, they mimicked the beavers' engineering skills, albeit using hand tools instead of teeth. The goal of these structures is not for people to attain mastery in underwater basket weaving, but rather to retain water on the landscape later in the season to create a more drought-resilient ecosystem for diverse species. When water reaches these structures during runoff, it slows the velocity at which it moves through the system, pooling in some areas and increasing the temporal distribution of soil moisture, recharging ground water reserves, and reconnecting the channel with its historic floodplain where water-adapted riparian-wetland plant communities may recover.


Though the process of fully restoring riparian ecosystems like these can be slow in terms of geologic and hydrologic time, we can see small and impactful shifts in just a few years. This project will demonstrate how these structures elicit landscape-scale changes over time through monitoring and replication. Ultimately, with the support of Chadwick Consulting, University of Wyoming, The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, Northern Great Plains Joint Venture, Montana Fish Wildlife & Parks, private landowners, and other partners listed above, this project will link to a larger collaborative effort to restore our riparian systems throughout the American West. Working at a landscape scale, across land ownership boundaries, and using a replicable watershed assessment model developed by Anabranch Solutions, LLC, this project in Montana is showing us a vision of shared success. 


Upcoming Events

Image Credit: MWCC, with Joseph Pecora Photography

Montana Watershed Coordination Council Fall Watershed Tour

Drought and Climate Resilience in the Blackfeet Nation

Blackfeet Nation

September 14-16, 2022

We've reported on the Ksik Stakii (Beaver) Project and other exceptional work coming out of the Blackfeet Nation in past newsletters, but an upcoming tour will offer a special chance to experience these efforts on the land. In this year's Montana Watershed Coordination Council Fall Watershed Tour, a diverse range of Blackfeet partners will orient participants to their projects involving beaver, bison, snowpack retention, food sovereignty, climate adaptation, and more. You can get a preview of the Blackfeet Nation's inspiring work in the Life in the Land documentary and podcast series (see below), and you can learn how to sign up and/or help sponsor the tour here

LTPBR Workshop and Field Day

Winnett, Montana

September 23, 2022


The Winnett ACES and their partners are hosting a Low-Tech, Process-Based Restoration (LTPBR) Workshop and Field Day on Friday, September 23, in Winnett. Hosted in partnership with Pheasants Forever, the Montana Conservation Corps, the Montana Association of Conservation Districts, the Bureau of Land Management, and the MWCC Watershed Fund, this event will feature the practice of adding simple, low-cost structures to riverscapes to mimic the functions and processes of healthy watersheds. It will also include information on what LTPBR resources may be available in other communities. Travel stipends available, and lunch will be provided. Anyone interested in learning more about these restoration techniques are encouraged to attend. More details to come! RSVP with winnett.aces.education@gmail.com.

Resources

Life in the Land

Lara Tomov / Stories for Action

Summer 2022


The connections between life and land run deep in Montana, and a new documentary film and podcast series relays their power. This impressive project features partners who are not only directly involved with beaver restoration but also those devoted to the relationships that will support a more resilient future for our state. The rural and Tribal perspectives featured here are diverse, compassionate, and compelling, and this inspiring, transformative series is sure to help us advance healthy, thriving communities in the years to come. Learn more and enjoy the series here

State Climate-Policy and Nature Based Solutions: A Match that Provides Multiple Benefits for Climate, Water, and More

Felicia Marcus, Stanford University Water in the West Program

August 2022


In myriad ways, conservationists are learning that the only way to truly work for nature is to work with nature. Given the unprecedented climate crises seen in the diverse, extreme conditions throughout the American West, states have special opportunities for leadership around the promise of nature-based solutions. While this new report has a focus on Colorado Basin states, its transferrable insights and nod to the beaver are worth heeding in Montana.

Rewilding the American West

Wiliam J. Ripple, Christopher Wolf, Michael K. Phillips, et al, BioScience

August 9, 2022


Across the United States, people are working to understand and act upon President Joe Biden's American the Beautiful Plan, in which an executive order called for the conservation of 30 percent of US land and water by 2030. In a new BioScience 

contribution, several leading scientists believe that working to conserve and restore two keystone species - beavers and gray wolves - will be crucial to advancing this goal. Read on here to see how. 

Dead Wood: The Afterlife of Trees

Oregon State University Press

August 2022


Beavers thrive at the intersection of wood and water, and so does Ellen Wohl. We've featured this renowned fluvial geomorphologist in our newsletter before, but she continues to churn out research and writings worth gnawing on. Her 2019 book, Saving the Dammed: Why We Need Beaver-Modified Ecosystems, relayed a detailed saga of life over time in one of the beaver meadows she intensively studied in Colorado. Now, she's launched a new tome that riffs on other aspects in the cycles of the terrestrial-aquatic interface. Published by Oregon State University Press, Dead Wood: The Afterlife of Trees is sure to be a provocative read for beaver believers, drawing on Wohl's long career spent exploring the vital connections between death and life, water and land, water and wood. 

Op-Ed: Want to Fight Climate Change and Drought at the Same Time? Bring Back Beavers

Chris E. Jordan and Emily Fairfax, Los Angeles Times

July 25, 2022


In our last issue, we gave a nod to the WIREs Water perspective paper from Chris Jordan and Emily Fairfax, which endorsed a beaver-inspired freshwater climate action plan for North America. Now, they are extending the significance of that contribution with an Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times. With more impressive citations and compelling examples of our climate emergency, this opinion piece effectively speaks to the challenges and opportunities facing people and watersheds, particularly in the American West. The authors acknowledge California's new statewide investment into beaver as a partner in nature-based restoration, and they suggest "groups that protect wildlife, fisheries, and wetlands should join forces across the West to make beavers integral to a coordinated climate change response." Read the full Op-Ed here

This image (Figure 2 in the paper) highlights the before, after, control, impact (BACI) design for monitoring the effects of beaver relocation on hydrology and stream temperature. Red thermometer symbols indiciate locations of in-stream continuous temperature probes, and orange triangles show flow discharge measurement locations. Additional temperature probes and discharge collection points were installed after a colony was successfully relocated. Arrays of groundwater (GW) wells were installed at anticipated dam sites and in the area upstream of the anticipated impact site. Credit: Dittbrenner, B.J., et al. 2022. Relocated beaver can increase water storage and decrease stream temperature in headwater streams. Ecosphere. 

Relocated Beaver Can Increase Water Storage and Decrease Stream Temperature in Headwater Streams

Benjamin J. Dittbrenner, Jason W. Schilling, Christian E. Torgerson, and Joshua E. Lawler, Ecosphere

July 2022


Beaver relocation is currently a complex, rarely-authorized strategy in Montana, but the Tulalip Tribes in Washington have used this approach in the name of conflict mitigation, habitat restoration, and climate adaptation. Since its start in 2013, the Tulalip Beaver Project has refined a relocation methodology that serves as a viable complement to restoration and coexistence priorities. The Tribes have become leaders in the science and practice of making relocation as effective as possible, and this new paper documents benefits to water quantity (increased storage) and quality (decreased temperature) in their study area. This paper will be a strong catalyst for related questions as climate change compels each region to evaluate beaver restoration opportunities. 

Leave it to Beavers

Tom Dickson, Montana Outdoors

May-June 2022


Montana Outdoors, the award-winning magazine published by Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, has a cover and feature story that is worth a read. Published in the May-June issue, this story does good work assessing FWP's angle on beaver restoration in our state, with a particular nod to the work underway at Spotted Dog Wildlife Management Area. This article also channels some excellent photography and infographics to visually magnify the many benefits that beaver restoration brings to our watersheds. Check out the story online here

BeaverCon Recordings

Beaver Institute

June 2022

Building on its 2020 success, this year's second BeaverCon event featured a stellar lineup of speakers, including Elissa Chott's outstanding representation of the Montana Beaver Conflict Resolution Project. The BeaverCon team has been incrementally adding recorded content to the Beaver Institute YouPage, so if you're eager to learn about coexistence, planning, communications, or complementary restoration strategies from around the country (and world), please check out the presentations here

Please send photos, stories, upcoming events, and other resources to:
Shelby Weigand - Senior Coordinator, Riparan Connectivity National Wildlife Federation
 
MT Beaver Working Group newsletters are posted online and can be found here.