OAEC’s WATER Institute was featured this month in SF Estuary Magazine (including Brock Dolman’s cover shot!) for beaver restoration work on Yellow Creek in the Tásmam Koyóm Maidu Cultural Park, Plumas County CA.
The 2,300-acre Humbug Valley known as Tásmam Koyóm, the homelands of the Mountain Maidu people, was returned to the tribe as part of PG&E’s land divestiture resulting from the bankruptcy settlement in 2019. Recognizing the cultural and ecological importance of beaver and the well-documented historical presence of beaver in Tásmam Koyóm, the Maidu Summit Consortium invited the WATER Institute to generate a Beaver Recruitment Strategy for the valley. Part of the recruitment strategy is to install a series of low-tech “Beaver Dam Analogs” (BDA’s) in the hopes of luring neighboring beaver back to the area, meanwhile enjoying many of the ecological benefits of beaver, such as minimizing erosion, raising the water table, increasing habitat for biodiversity, etc.
The SF Estuary article is a great summary of how “Beaver Dam Analogs” work, as well as the collaboration between the Maidu Summit Consortium, Swift Water Designs, US Fish and Wildlife Service and OAEC. Check it out!
https://www.sfestuary.org/estuary-news-thinking-beaver-yellow-creek/?fbclid=IwAR19S445FrGm_-c6ZUtIYeqC8V12eq4Z3-zG_MvdQACeycSPrp5L7mIZsGU
