SVPA News

Fall 2025

Finding Balance with Beavers in the Snoqualmie Valley

In our highly modified agricultural landscape, beavers can be both a benefit and a real challenge. Many Snoqualmie Valley landowners know firsthand the difficulties they can bring—flooded pastures and fields, plugged culverts and ditches, downed or girdled trees, damaged roads and fences, and even crop loss when water backs up quickly.

That’s why SVPA created BeaverWise: to help farmers and other landowners navigate these impacts. The program prioritizes protecting farmland, infrastructure, and safety while also working to optimize the ecosystem services beavers provide—where it’s most appropriate. Our team offers site assessments, practical tools like flow devices and tree protection, permitting guidance, cost-share opportunities, monitoring, and, when coexistence isn’t possible, coordination for relocation to areas where beavers can benefit the local ecosystem.

The goal is simple: reduce risks for working lands while capturing the water, habitat, and resiliency benefits that beavers can provide in the right places.

With that context, we’re excited to share the following article from our new BeaverWise Outreach and Education Volunteer, Tashina Kimble, highlighting how beavers can help during periods of drought in the Snoqualmie Valley.

In the Snoqualmie Valley this time of year, we experience periods of drought that bring a suite of problems, but beavers can help during these critical times for farms in the valley. Beavers are known as ecosystem engineers because they shape the ecosystems they inhabit by regulating water levels, providing a secure habitat for raising their young, protecting themselves from predators, and storing food (Rosell et al., 2005). Over time, beavers create wetlands and change the course of the water flow by maintaining stream and river banks. While eating their favorite tree species, willow, the discarded willow parts can populate water banks, increasing plant diversity, stabilizing stream and river banks, and reducing erosion (Goldfarb, 2018).

When beavers cause the water levels to rise, the weight and pressure of the stored water recharge aquifers (Rosell et al., 2005). This benefits downstream neighbors by replenishing the rock layer beneath their land with water, which creates better access to aquifers for humans and animals. By increasing the water table, beaver dams can also reduce the amount of irrigation needed on farms during periods of drought. The water near and around beaver complexes flows cooler and slower too, as it is not affected by the constant pressure of additional water in a non-dammed area and flows deeper from within the sediment, making it cooler than water passing through a traditional path and more habitable for our salmon and native fish populations too (Rosell et al., 2005). 

Beavers encourage the growth of wetlands, allowing humans and animals alike to benefit from increased plant diversity and quality, and improving the availability of foraging resources for local livestock and ungulates. Their dams store excess sediment and filter out pollutants, leaving behind nutrient-rich deposits that benefit plants and nearby crops (Project Beaver, 2025). Abandoned lodges or dams are sometimes referred to as beaver meadows, due to their fertile soil and abundant groundwater (Goldfarb, 2018). The difference is apparent in a non-beaver affected area, with dry, dead grass and soil; however, once you step into a riparian area with the lush vegetation, supported by beavers, it is hard to believe it is still drought season. 

Interested in learning more about the benefits beavers can provide on your property or are you experiencing negative impacts from beavers? We are here to help! Reach out to Justine Casebolt, Beaver Conservation Manager at Justine@svpa.us or visit https://svpa.us/beaverwise-program/ for more information. 

Author: Tashina Kimble, BeaverWise Outreach and Education Volunteer

What's New with Floodzilla?

SVPA’s Flood Monitoring Program, Floodzilla, has integrated two new gauges into our network. SVPA-6 and SVPA-6B have been monitoring water levels all summer along Cherry Creek, and within the Cherry Valley Wildlife Area Unit. These two locations monitor water levels draining across the whole lower Cherry Valley, through a flood gate, and then along Cherry Creek into the main stem of the Snoqualmie River. It's a diverse area of the Snoqualmie River floodplain, including hunting grounds, agriculture, wildlife habitat, trails, roads and homes. This work which involved using a new supplier for gauges and gateways wouldn't have been possible without our new Network Integration Specialist, Rick Suehring, and our Web Developer Dave Sanderman.

We monitor the flood season at all flood gauge sites from October to May, and we're beginning to deploy our gauges for the flood season this month. Remember to sign up for alerts either on our website, or by download the phone app (for Apple or Android).

New Flood Gauges along Cherry Valley (left) and Cherry Creek (right) and our Network Integration Specialist Rick S. installing a new gauge (middle).