Connecting people and sharing resources to advance the beaver's keystone role

in watershed health

Beaver sets out to gather willows for a winter cache on the Yaak River. Thank you to Montana photographer Randy Beacham for donating this gorgeous photo for our first issue of 2025!

A typical day in the office for the Montana Conservation Corps' mud-mastering, incision-reversing, ever-inspiring LTPBR team. Photo Credits: Autumn Holzgen

A Focused, Effective Can-Do Crew: How the Montana Conservation Corps is Healing and Hydrating the Northern Great Plains

By Autumn Holzgen - Montana Conservation Corps Northern Great Plains Program Manager

Montana Conservation Corps (MCC) is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to inspire young people through hands-on conservation service to be leaders, stewards of the land, and engaged citizens who improve their communities. A premier example of this is the work our AmeriCorps members and staff implemented over the last three years combating drought and increasing resiliency across the Northern Great Plains. Having seen how this has provided countless opportunities for our participants to engage with rural communities, have a lasting impact on the landscape, and leave Montana in a better place, we plan to continue this work into the future. 

But where did such a promising project begin? In 2020, MCC created a position focused on engaging partners across Central and Eastern Montana. Early on, the role entailed attending roundtable discussions centered on severe drought and its effect on the prairie ecosystem. In sharing resources and exploring opportunities, people naturally started asking, “What are Beaver Dam Analogs (BDAs) and how could they help to store water?” During this time, the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) were already off to the races, implementing low-tech process-based restoration (LTPBR) projects and offering training throughout Central Montana. Because of these efforts, the interest and demand for more BDA projects on private lands increased, which enabled a much larger watershed-level impact across both private and public lands. 

As landowner and partner enthusiasm grew, it was also met with realistic challenges, especially the shortage of practitioners with enough experience and knowledge to manage these projects. With a great deal of dialogue and planning, MCC and our partners hatched an idea to create a specialized restoration crew that would not only help address the partner-identified need, but would also develop an inspirational and impactful crew experience for the next generation of conservationists. The specialized crew model relied on the participants being strategically trained on how to read degraded riverscapes and apply the principles of low-tech process-based restoration to mesic and wet meadow restoration. The crews would be autonomous and equipped with the necessary vehicles, tools, and camping gear to allow them to get the job done. 

This idea came to life when MCC earned a National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) Grant in 2021. The grant fully funded a staff position (my current role) to provide project planning capacity, part of the crews’ labor cost, and a contracted ecologist, Amy Chadwick, who was pivotal in training staff and crews in all things related to increasing drought resiliency across a vast and somewhat daunting landscape. MCC first launched the specialized restoration crews during the 2022 field season, with two crews implementing 14 weeks' worth of mesic and wet meadow restoration work on both private and public lands throughout Central and Eastern Montana.  

From there, interest and impact grew significantly over the next two years. These specialized crew positions are now coveted by interested young people looking to serve with MCC. Enthusiasm among landowners has also grown significantly, with partners and MCC staff now regularly fielding calls from people keen to get these projects on the ground. In response, MCC will have four specialized crews serving in 2025, and the combined effort will be capable of completing more than 100 weeks of project work during the upcoming field season*.

* See the Opportunities section below to learn how you or someone you know can be part of this work!

A snapshot of beaver dam distribution across the watersheds of Montana. Image Credit: Utah State University

Worthy Dams: Montana FWP Completes Statewide Beaver Dam Census

Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks (FWP) has completed an aerial imagery census of beaver dams in Montana. Not just one or those on a select stream, but all the dams. From the western mountains to the eastern grasslands, a total of 32,336 beaver dams are visible on aerial imagery across our state! Beaver dams are especially abundant in the headwaters of the Milk River and the Big Sandy watersheds. The Big Hole Valley also had an exceptionally high dam count, but the dam density (dams per km of perennial stream) was relatively low. It is important to note that tribal lands had by far the highest beaver dam densities at 1.16 dams/km, while most other land ownerships hovered in the 0.15 to 0.50 dams/km range. This meticulous remote sensing survey required 910 hours of contracted support from colleagues at Utah State University. This effort represents a notable achievement for the Montana Beaver Action Plan and, since beaver restoration works best through partnership with existing beavers, it will help practitioners prioritize effective strategies that give Montana's watersheds a healthy future. While the entirety of this detailed dataset will not be released on the internet to protect beaver location security, Montana FWP Nongame Biologist Torrey Ritter (torrey.ritter@mt.gov) welcomes questions about this project and its applications.

Beaver: A Medicine of Possibility

Indigenous Led / Beaver Institute

February 11, 2025 (official launch)

Co-produced by Indigenous Led and Beaver Institute, Beaver: A Medicine of Possibility is a short film that explores how Beaver—nature’s master builders—offers us invaluable lessons in connection, rebuilding, and healing. Through their behaviors and roles in ecosystem engineering, Beaver inspire us to reconnect with nature, rebuild our communities, and heal the fractured relationships between humans and the natural world. Featuring narration from Lailani Upham of the Blackfeet Nation, this outstanding presentation is of special relevance for Montanans. To learn more about this film, and how you can help support the success of the community gatherings, screenings, and InterTribal Beaver Council that will accompany it, please see here.

Spring 2025 Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration Courses

Utah State University Restoration Consortium 

Spring 2025 (Registration begins on Nov 14, 2024)

The purpose of the Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration (LT-PBR) workshop series is to provide restoration practitioners with guidelines for implementing a subset of low-tech tools—namely beaver dam analogues (BDAs) and post-assisted log structures (PALS)—for initiating process-based restoration in structurally-starved riverscapes. We will describe ‘low-tech process-based restoration’ (LT-PBR) as a practice of using simple, low unit-cost, structural additions (e.g. wood and beaver dams) to riverscapes to mimic functions and initiate specific processes. Hallmarks of this approach include:

• An explicit focus on the processes that a low-tech restoration intervention is meant to promote
• A conscious effort to use cost-effective, low-tech treatments (e.g. hand-built, natural materials, non-engineered, short-term design life-spans) because of the need to efficiently scale-up application.
• ‘Letting the system do the work’ which defers critical decision making to riverscapes and nature’s ecosystem engineers

Introduction to LT-PBR: Jan 7, 14, & 21

Planning of LT-PBR: Jan 28 & Feb 4, 11

Science and Case Studies of LT-PBR: Feb 18 & 25, & Mar 4

Design of LT-PBR: Mar 18, 25 & Apr 1

Implementation of LT-PBR: Apr 8 & 12* (* = Field Trip in Logan, UT)

Adaptive Management of LT-PBR: Apr 15 & 22

Courses can be taken invidually or as a series. Learn more here.

Dam It: Partnering with Beavers to Heal the Planet

Ben Goldfarb, Journalist and Author

Emerson Center for the Arts & Culture, Bozeman

January 16, 2025 (recorded presentation and panel)

In his book Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb reveals that our modern conception of a healthy ecosystem is wrong, distorted by the fur trade that once eliminated millions of beavers from North America’s waterways. The consequences of losing beavers were profound: ponds drained, wetlands dried up, and species from salmon to swans lost vital habitat. Today, a growing coalition of “Beaver Believers”—including scientists, farmers, and passionate citizens—recognizes that ecosystems with beavers are far healthier than those without them. From the Nevada deserts to the Scottish highlands, Believers are hard at work restoring these industrious rodents to their former haunts. On January 16, before a hearty audience of 300+ people in Bozeman, Ben gave a talk for the Gallatin Valley Earth Day speaker series, exploring the history and biology of this world-changing species; how beavers can help us fight drought, flooding, wildfire, and climate change; and how we can coexist with this challenging but vital rodent. His talk was followed by a panel discussion with Connor Parrish (Trout Unlimited), Kurt Imhoff (Greater Yellowstone Coalition), and Leah Thayer (World Wildlife Fund), and the whole show can be viewed here.

Schematic illustration of factors influencing resilience in river corridors with minimal human alteration. Non-bold text under “what,” “where,” and “how” provides examples of characteristics that influence these factors. Inset illustrations clockwise from top left: map of spatial heterogeneity in the Yukon River floodplain, Alaska; headwater stream in Colorado; river bead in Colorado; logjam on the Dall River, Alaska; beaver dam on the Fall River, Colorado; floodplain marsh and lake along the Yukon River, Alaska; herbaceous and woody riparian vegetation along Deep Creek, Oregon; inundated floodplain forest along the Rio Badajos in the Amazon River basin. Image Credit: Wohl E. (2024). Resilience in river corrridors: How much do we need. Perspectives of Earth and Space Scientists, 5(1), https://doi.org/10.1029/2023CN000226.

Reslience in River Corridors: How Much Do We Need?

Ellen Wohl

Perspectives of Earth and Space Scientists

August 2024

Fluvial geomorphologist Ellen Wohl may not live in Montana, but her gifts to our state are immense. From her base at Colorado State University, Wohl continues to churn out some of the best science in the field, with applied knowledge and masterful syntheses of the numerous, complex issues affecting riparian health. With 569 total publications (as of January 2025), and 21 publications in 2024 alone, Wohl is incredibly prolific, and her work is highly relevant to the watershed processes that beavers promote. In one of her recent open-access papers, "Resilience in River Corridors: How Much Do We Need," Wohl illuminates what processes confer resilience and how and where they do so. Her analysis lends critical nuance to a world that is often used but is little understood, and it points practitioners to the deeper questions that underpin our intentions. This paper details the limits to quantifying causes and predicting effects of river resilience, and it calls our focus towards connections, actions, and case studies that integrate multi-scale change. This paper is available here. It will certainly not be the last of Wohl's publications that we cover in this newsletter, and anyone who can't wait for our next note on Wohl's work can find her full oeuvre on ResearchGate here.

If You Build It

Ben Goldfarb

National Parks Conservation Association

Winter 2025

On the western edge of Rocky Mountain National Park, the Kawuneeche Valley has lost 90 percent of its historic water supply. Still affected by ecological (and cultural) upheavals wrought prior to RMRP's establishment more than a century ago, beavers are becoming the old friend with a key to help rewater the marshy landscape once again. Like many other successes taking hold in the American West, this is a story of public-private collaboration, with beaver at a means, motivator, and measure for whole-watershed healing. To learn how the beaver is helping people work across borders, share resources, and catalyze change, read on here. Photo Credit: Dariusz Kowalczyk / Wikipedia CC

The Montana Beaver Conflict Resolution Program - Tools for Coexistence

Leah Swartz, Guest Columnist

Bozeman Daily Chronicle

January 5, 2025



Leah Swartz, restoration project manager for Freshwater Partners in Livingston, recently published a thoughtful op-ed , highlighting the increasingly successful Montana Beaver Conflict Resolution Program as it enters its sixth year. Her contribution is a model for how to enhance awareness and action for beavers in our communities through local media. Read more here, and consider following Leah's example!

Castorology

Rob Rich with Alie Ward

Ologies

December 18, 2024

Beavers have earned some time on Ologies, an award-winning science podcast. In this Castorology episode, field ecologist Rob Rich - who also works with the Montana Beaver Working Group - shares a conversation with host Alie Ward about all things beaver. Drawing on his work applying wildlife track & sign interpretive skills to document and protect biological diversity, Rob offers wide-ranging insights about the wonders of beaver evolution, anatomy, behavior, and ecology. Ninety minutes is hardly enough for this topic, but this conversation is here to help spark a fresh curiosity about the complex natural history of North America's largest rodent. Tune in here.

Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration Explorer

Riverscapes Consortium

December 2024

Who is using low-tech process-based restoration, and where? To see the vast network of practioners in action, and to put your project on the map, the Riverscapes Consortium is curating a dynamic web application called LTBPR Explorer. This interactive tool is designed to showcase projects and encourage practitioner communication linked to LTPBR applications for restoring riverscape health. As Frankie Freilich (Montana Implementation Manager for Anabranch Solutions) has noted, users can share short project descriptions and quantify the amount of work that projects have done. To date, Anabranch alone has completed 134 projects with 10,231 structures over 204 river miles! These are not only the kind of stats that are useful in solictiations for funding support, but they are also crucial for documenting our collective impact at multiple scales. For a snapshot of how this work is evolving across space and time, you can also use this storymap, which serves as an excellent synthesis to complement LTPBR Explorer. Please consider signing up and contributing your efforts. Frankie welcomes questions (frankie.freilich@anabranchsolutions.com) for anyone who wants more information or support.

The eastern two-thirds of Montana lacks topographical relief, and the streams there certainly don't look like a scene from A River Runs Through It. But the wet, green riparian ribbons of the Northern Great Plains harbor wildlife corridors, refugia, and complexities that are vital to beavers and other diverse species. Image Credit: USGS / Wikipedia Commons.

Understanding Western South Dakota Prairie Streams

Krista Ehlert et al.

South Dakota State University Extension

December 2024

AND

Intermittent Prairie Streams in the Northern Great Plains: A Case for an Undervalued Ecosystem

Christian Lenhart, Kristin Blann, and Krista Ehlert

Case Studies in the Environment

October 2023

"We know relatively little about how beavers affect water and physical habitat in prairie streams," Montana FWP's 2023 beaver white paper concedes, "highlighting a significant need in the form of research and monitoring in the less mountainous parts of Montana." Thankfully, recent syntheses from Krista Ehlert can help us appreciate how these systems function. Ehlert, who works with South Dakota State University, has produced a stunning online guide, Understanding Western South Dakota Prairie Streams. In 12 robust sections and 5 practical appendices, Ehlert's guide explores many fascinating aspects surrounding the ecology, classification, and managment of waters in the Northern Great Plains. Highly relevant to the eastern two-thirds of Montana, the insights of Ehlert (and her co-authors) offer a comprehensive foundation for restoration in this region, which she further encourages in the compelling 2023 paper, "Intermittent Prairie Streams in the Northern Great Plains: A Case for an Undervalued Ecosystem." These informative, necessary publications should be required reading for anyone working with water east of the Rockies.

Wildland Restoration Team Member (Mesic Restoration)

Montana Conservation Corps

Helena, MT

Applications Due: May 1, 2025



Wildland Restoration Teams (Mesic Restoration) will participate in a variety of innovative wetland and habitat restoration projects across central and eastern Montana, with a main focus on mesic restoration techniques including beaver mimicry and in-stream beaver-dam analog construction. See the feature article above for more details on the evolution of transformative opportunity for early-career professionals, and see here for details on how you or someone you know can be part of it.

Photo Credit: Rob Rich

Please send photos, stories, upcoming events, opportunities, and other resources to:

Shelby Weigand - Riparian Connectivity Manager,

National Wildlife Federation

WeigandS@nwf.org

MT Beaver Working Group newsletters are posted online here.