1 of 35

Working with Beavers to Create Watershed Resilience - FbD Lunch & Learn Series

March 7th, 2024

2 of 35

Today’s Speakers:

Jean-Paul A. Zagarola, Senior Program Manager for the Bonneville Environmental Foundation. With a background as a restoration ecologist, Jean-Paul cultivates diverse collaboratives to mainstream beaver-based restoration and accelerate wildfire resilience actions in Oregon.
Mark Heckert, Principal and Lead Researcher for Beaver Creek Environmental Services, Inc. Mark fancies himself a wildlife biologist and budding naturalist in South Puget Sound and owns and runs a small environmental consulting firm in Puyallup, focusing mainly on wetlands and beaver relocation.

3 of 35

Agenda:

12:00 - 12:05 - Welcome and Introductions
12:05 - 12:20 - Jean-Paul Zagarola, Bonneville Environmental Foundation - ecological benefits of beavers
12:20-12:35 - Mark Heckert, Beaver Creek Environmental Services, Inc. - background on work being done in WA and barriers
12:35 - 12:45 - Tools to help strategize/prioritize
12:45 - 12:55 - Discussion
1:00 - 1:30 - Time held for ongoing discussion if needed

4 of 35

LIMITING FACTORS TO WATERSHED RECOVERY AND RESILIENCE

Beaver reduced to near-extinction in 1800s. Along with other anthropogenic impacts since colonization, this has led to:

Channel incision and simplification
Lowering of water table and reduced groundwater storage
Elevated peak flows
Low summer base flows and high summer temperature extremes
Reduced riparian forest resilience against wildfire damage
Climate change will compound these negative impacts and creates new ones

more flooding
Extended drought
More and greater extent of wildfire

5 of 35

BEAVERS ARE WATERSHED SUPERHEROES

Beaver complexes can:

Increase surface and groundwater storage and summer base flows
Dampen effects of flooding
Improve sediment retention and water quality
Create diversity hotspots - rich food resources for fish and wildlife
Vastly improve salmonid habitat (food, channel complexity, temperature heterogeneity)
Provide refuge during wildfire and wildfire breaks in some cases

6 of 35

Beaver habitats improve water quality, attenuate flows and recharge ground water storage

Conceptual Model

7 of 35

Katie Holzer, Ph.D. - City of Gresham Watershed Scientist

Large constructed wetland with carefully designed flow path
Beavers changed move in

8 of 35

Collected water quality samples during storms

Inlets and outlets of facilities
7 storms without dams, 6 storms with dams
Metals, nutrients, sediment, pesticides

Removed dams

Sampled before and after

Katie Holzer City of Gresham

9 of 35

Temperature remains stable or improves

Katie Holzer City of Gresham

10 of 35

11 of 35

BEAVER AND SALMONIDS

Bouwes et al. 2018

12 of 35

BEAVERS REPEATEDLY CREATE REFUGE DURING FIRE.

???

Fairfax and Whittle (2020)

13 of 35

???

Beavers repeatedly create refugia during fire.

Looks like Smokey Bear got a helping hand from Smokey the Beaver.

Fairfax and Whittle (2020)

14 of 35

BEAVERS AND WILDFIRE

15 of 35

16 of 35

17 of 35

18 of 35

19 of 35

20 of 35

21 of 35

Improve Watershed and Cultural Capacity for Beaver and their Beneficial Behaviors

Data Collection and Analysis

Stakeholder, LO input/info. & Partnership Building

Internal Operations Tools

Outreach and Education

On the Ground Restoration

Beaver Co-existence

1. Beavers provide a range of ecological and community benefits
2. Legacy anthropogenic impacts limit dam building
3. Beavers can cause conflict
🡪 Socio-ecological phased approach

Authentic stakeholder engagement and robust habitat assessment

Data collection and analysis – where the landscape can support dam building and where to intervene to create the necessary conditions (we need a starting point)
SE – Who will support dam building and how to address barriers to accepting co-existence with beavers and how to tailor our messaging
Internal operational tools – what do we do when landowners have conflicts with beaver or want beaver
Outreach and education – using results from SE to tailor messaging and spread the good news about beaver!
On the ground restoration – time to get our hands dirty and promote beaver dam building after the other components are complete
Co-existence – assist or refer LOs for conflict reduction strategies that promotes co-exWe want to create the conditions to promote beaver dam building

22 of 35

FINE SCALE HABITAT ASSESSMENT�

Beaver Dam Capacity - estimates the upper limit of dam density by examining 5 lines of evidence
Conservation/Restoration Assessment – Identifies opportunity areas for restoration, areas with limited ‘risk’ of human-beaver conflict and some existing capacity.
Potential Conflict Model/Risk Assessment - Identifies reasons why capacity may be limited or where conflict is likely to occur
sqlBRAT – facilitates easy integration of datasets and field data for model calibration
Community Science BRAT - Potential for community science driven calibration for localized refinement

Understanding the capacity of all perennial streams to support dam building

Evaluates capacity for dam building, not whether or not beaver are present - LiDAR, vegetation data and regional curves to evaluate stream power and water quanity
Opportunity areas – where risk is minimal, and improvements to dam capacity are feasible
sqlBRAT – in combination with Python facilitates the development of an updateable model by using a cloud database. SQL structures and accesses the data, while python performs the analysis. Because of the ability to relate multiple databases BRAT using sql can facilitate customization - integrating field data and other data sets and accommodate new lines of evidence while automating the analysis process

Field work ~ 1000 hours of field time funded

Community Science BRAT – simple protocol, new application for on-the-fly calibration

5 lines of evidence

Is their enough water present to maintain a pond
Can veg support dam building
Can beaver build a dam at base flow
Cab beaver build a dam at high flow
Stream gradient

23 of 35

24 of 35

FIELD CALIBRATION- VALIDATION PLANNING

Goal: ground truth BRAT model

Reach Sampling: GRITS sampling with even distribution across ecoregions – 1500 reaches
Landowner outreach – approx. 600 mailouts to riparian landowners, approx. 1000 properties -> access gained on 375 properties from 170 landowners
Surveyor recruitment - MWBP staff, students from OSU New Beginnings for Tribal Students program, Great Old Broads for Wilderness

25 of 35

FIELD CALIBRATION- CURRENT STATUS

Landowner outreach – survey access gained on 375 properties from 170 public/private landowners
Over 90 surveys conducted covering 18 stream miles

26 of 35

27 of 35

FIELD DATA COLLECTION

Protocol developed customized to region
Teams of two – survey 300 meter reaches using the MWBP BRAT protocol

BRAT assessment
Dam inventory
Sign of the beaver
Regional factors

28 of 35

STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT

Identifying barriers and benefits using a community based social marketing approach

Methods

In-Depth Interviews (13)
Focus Groups (4)
Mailed Surveys (1600, 400 returned)

Audience

Riparian Private Landowners
Large Timber
Agriculture
Public Works Departments
Irrigation Districts

29 of 35

Some key SE highlights

General appreciation for beavers and their benefits
Wildfire and drought a major concern
Language matters! Confusion on the meaning of coexistence
Misconceptions about beaver – need for basic information campaign
Where are the champions?
Preference for a “One Stop Shop” website

General appreciation for beavers and their benefits among all stakeholders
Wildfire and drought a major concern among a list of issues potentially impacting properties – invasives, wildlife impacts, development…
Coexistence for many timber stakeholders meant not proactively trapping and removing but trapping or destroying dams when it becomes a problem to infrastructure

4. Pervasiveness of several myths about beaver

5. We need to finding the champions – most Timber and agriculture view co-existence measures as ineffective. Points to the need to develop successful pilot projects to showcase to other producers. Local evidence based information is most effective. Not interested in public displays of commitment due to privacy concerns. Outreach efforts should be private.

6. Ag who recognize beaver benefits have a preference for a one-stop-shop resource that provide detailed information on co-existence techniques

30 of 35

NEXT STEPS FOR THE MWBP

Habitat Assessment

Data analysis and reporting

Stakeholder Engagement

Website development
Information based campaign - www.mwbeaverpartnership.org
Continued outreach

Integration

Beaver habitat management plans
Publishing of results
Pilot Project development
Restoration and Co-Existence Implementation

31 of 35

SCALING UP

Oregon BRAT Project

Uncalibrated BRAT for the state
Grassroots process for calibration
Online resource hub to house results and support local beaver based restoration planning and implementation