Photo Credit: Rob Rich

The Piikani Lands Field Crew has been a force of nature for the Blackfeet Nation's Ksik Stakii (Beaver) Project. By leveraging support from the Montana Conservation Corps for projects tied to Blackfeet lands and conservation goals, this team has made stunning contributions to beaver mimicry and so much more (Photo Credit: Blackfeet Nation).

Not far from the beaver habitat of Willow and Depot Creeks, on the grounds of Blackfeet Community College, an impressive Piikani Climate Adaptation Park is underway. In a skillful blend of regenerative agriculture innovations and ancestral practices for stewarding native plants, this is a place where traditional ecological knowledge and wholesome foods are nourishing each other. Photo Credit: Rob Rich

Just outside of Browning High School, in late fall 2021,, students employed cold fingers to weave this willow snow fence. But the effort was also filled with learning and fun, and it will yield meaningful insights about wetland recharge and water stewardship for years to come. Photo Credit: Jessy Stevenson

Inspired by Ksik Stakii and the Amskapi Piikani: 2022 Fall Watershed Tour

Just as the aspens were starting to yellow along Miistakis – "the backbone of the world” – over 70 conservation leaders gathered on the land of the Amskapi Piikani (Blackfeet) people for the 2022 Fall Watershed Tour. The Blackfeet Nation and the Montana Watershed Coordination Council (MWCC) had spent over two years developing this event, which powerfully demonstrated and celebrated the Blackfeet Nation’s efforts to protect their land, water, and culture in a rapidly changing climate.

The Blackfeet Nation earned MWCC’s 2021 Montana Watershed Stewardship Award for their Ksik Stakii (Beaver) Project, and they’ve continued to cultivate the promise of its resilient, keystone relationships. This ongoing, multi-faceted project has involved beaver mimicry, conflict prevention, intergenerational training, and effectiveness monitoring (so far), and the Tour highlighted how the integrative power of ksik stakii has inspired the transfer of ceremony, skills, and hope. With its rich cultural and ecological significance, the Ksik Stakii Project brought life into the 2018 Blackfeet Climate Change Adaptation Plan, and it has enabled the Nation to advance connected goals in food sovereignty, wetland recharge, and regenerative land stewardship.

Over the course of two days, participants had the honor of seeing these aspirations in action. Tour stops emphasized applied practices, each drawn from ancient roots and applied with adaptations for today’s watershed concerns. One endearing example included the Nation’s snow fences, which, not unlike beaver dams, are woody ramparts meant to hold back water (albeit in the frozen phase). While people of blizzard-prone places may be familiar with a snow fence’s common role in protecting roads or human infrastructure, the Blackfeet ask questions to further the fences’ worth: Why not strategically place them to promote water storage in the wetlands so easily dried in a warming climate? Why not build with and beside Browning High School, so youth could experience and expand such future-oriented work? Why not get beaver-like and weave them with willows, as a cultural innovation fit to this place?

Experimental and creative, encompassing and curious, these questions go far beyond the mere necessities of logistical adjustment for a landscape where winter winds regularly warp T-posts. Instead, these questions typify the evolving, embodied, and enduring relevance of traditional ecological knowledge that is drawn from many millennia of observing what keeps a place hydrated and healthy. It takes immense courage and effort to revive that knowledge, which has so often been buried in the generational trauma that has broken ties between nature and culture. It takes even more conviction and energy to revise that knowledge for an uncertain future with the hope of shared success. And yet, this is exactly what the Blackfeet are doing.

How is ksik stakii and the Amskapi Piikani inspiring you today? How can you emulate and elevate the promise of Indigenous-led stewardship? For more images and insights as you live into these questions, make sure you check out the MWCC's blog post from the 2022 Fall Watershed Tour.

Photo Credit: Utah State University

Exclosures such as this one keep elk and moose from browsing willows to the ground, and allow beavers to build watery oases with their dams. Photo Credit: Patrick Cone / National Parks Traveler

Putting Beavers to Work in Rocky Mountain National Park

Patrick Cone, National Parks Traveler

October 2022

Rocky Mountain National Park may boast some of the highest alpine refugia in the USA, but its landscapes have not escaped dramatic change over recent centuries. By the time RMNP was established in 1915, the once-robust beaver population had been largely erased by the Fur Trade. Local beaver enthusiast Enos Mills highlighted the beaver's absence as a reason for the land's permanent protection, and in the decades since, the rodents have been slowly returning to their old haunts. Meanwhile, the proliferation of elk and moose - without wolves to keep them in check - had whittled away the willows that comprised the main food and building materials for the recovering beavers. Today, that leaves RMNP managers with complex questions: How can we restore the ecological functions that keep the Park healthy? How can we help beavers help us towards that goal? In launching a new series of stories featuring the role of beavers in the restoration of national park ecosystems, National Parks Traveler heads to RMNP. Check out the story and film here, and let's hope they explore the beaver's significance in the national parks that touch Montana, too. 

North-central Montana missed the cool, wet spring that graced surrounding regions in the state in 2022, but the Winnett ACES (Agricultural Community Enhancement and Sustainability) are already planning adaptations to stay wetter next year. While this BDA looks high and dry right now, it is strategically placed to catch the runoff flows that will follow the upcoming winter. Photo Credit: Morgan Marks

Resources from Winnett ACES' Successful Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration Workshop

Winnett ACES

September 23, 2022

In partnership with Pheasants Forever, Montana Conservation Corps, Montana Association of Conservation Districts, Bureau of Land Management, and the MWCC Watershed Fund, Winnett ACES hosted a Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration (LTPBR) Workshop and Field Day on Friday, Sept. 23, in Winnett, MT. This event featured presentations, resources, and site tours that demonstrated the benefits of adding simple, low-cost structures to riverscapes to mimic the functions and processes of healthy watersheds across public and private land. Collaboration was the thematic heart of this event, and a robust panel Q&A session sparked the curiosity and awe that beaver and water provoke. Learn more about the Winnett Aces and their role as stewards of the animals, land, and water in their community here.

Photo Credit: Ben Goldfarb

Beavers Are Finally Getting the Rebrand They Deserve 

Jackie Flynn Mogensen, Mother Jones 

September 9, 2022

In the first week of September, soon after our last newsletter went out, beavers rocked the headlines in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Los Angeles Times. Mother Jones summarized this beaver blitz on some of the biggest news outlets in the country, noting how "the science is finally trickling down to policymakers and journalists." Since it is truly quite "rare for rodents of any kind to achieve any kind of all-star status," it is worth reflecting on what such a beaver "moment" means for the movement we are a part of with this newsletter, and the work we collectively do. While this is not about the importance of being a celebrity, it is about the subtle yet significant power of taking the lead from nature. When working with and for beavers, we are making the world better. 

For additional responses to beavers in the big media, please consider listening to this KQED radio forum featuring some experts with connections to California's related endorsement of the state's beaver restoration potential. And then, for a vital reminder about beavers' intrinsic worth in this world – which is far more fundamental than any fame or utility these animals hold for humans – make sure you read "The Free Agent Beaver," a recent Op-Ed from The Revelator. 

While many waters have been severed from their floodplains on BLM lands in eastern Montana, the agency has fully endorsed the promise of low-tech process-based restoration for reconnecting a dynamic, diverse riverscape like the one shown in the lower photo (Credit: BLM) 

Teaching While Doing - Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration of Riverscapes Workshop: Building Partnerships and Technical Capacity to Improve Riverscape Health

Bureau of Land Management / Utah State University Riverscapes Consortium 

August 9-11, 2022

The Bureau of Land Management recently hosted a workshop to launch on-the-ground efforts that will restore riparian health at Pumpkin Creek, near Miles City, Montana. A tributary of the Tongue River, Pumpkin Creek is a perennial prairie stream, located entirely within the Northwestern Great Plains ecoregion (level 3 EPA Ecoregions). Like most valley bottoms in the region, the historic removal of beaver, livestock grazing, and subsequent channel incision have impaired the system’s health.  Despite years of improved grazing management, it remains in a degraded state and recovery is exceedingly slow. The Miles City Field and Montana/Dakotas State Offices, therefore, coordinated with Utah State University and the Riverscapes Consortium to write a restoration planning and design report that: (i) was used to guide related workshop efforts and discussions, (ii) Miles City staff can use to restore the rest of Pumpkin Creek (their first LTPBR project), and (iii) other BLM staff and partners can use as a template to plan and design their own projects. This report, related permits, and other project information are available on the Pumpkin Creek Workshop & Project Webpage and by contacting Alden Shallcross (ashallcross@blm.gov) for a recent workshop recap.

Job Opportunity: Beaver Corps Program Director

Beaver Institute

Applications Due: December 1, 2022 / Job Start Date: January 2023

In response to the beaver movement's need for more coexistence training and resources, the Beaver Institute incorporated as a nonprofit in 2017, and it has inpsired science-based solutions for beaver-human conflicts ever since. Given the organization's continued growth and impact, the Beaver Institute is now hiring a Program Director for its keystone program, Beaver Corps. Here in our state, this program helped partners cultivate the skills and knowldge to launch the Montana Beaver Conflict Resolution Project, where Elissa Chott is among the 54 Beaver Corps particpants acorss the United States and Canada. This new job with the Beaver Institute will support existing Beaver Corps members, expand Beaver Corps enrollment, and co-develop a new Beaver BioBank Program, among other things. Please explore these developments and this remote job opportunity here!