Study Offers New Framework for Evaluating the Efficacy of Beaver-Related Restoration Efforts
Northwest CASC-supported researchers propose a new framework for evaluating beaver-related restoration strategies that offers an adaptive evaluation approach to habitat management.
Stream ecosystems in the Northwest faced widespread degradation after losing beaver populations to hunting and habitat loss in the 19th century. Beaver populations have since rebounded and their dam building skills have been identified as beneficial to restoring streams that are increasingly stressed by factors including climate change exacerbated drought. This has led to a growth in beaver-related restoration (BRR) projects in the western United States that involve transferring beavers to degraded streams, building artificial dams, and restoring vegetation along streams to provide dam-building material that attracts beavers. A new Northwest CASC-supported study introduces a framework that serves as a roadmap to the complex suite of interactions that occur within a beaver restoration strategy. This framework helps set reasonable expectations for the beaver restoration efforts through a more adaptive evaluation approach and acknowledges the complexity typically involved in evaluating this type of restoration strategy. Using this proposed framework to document restoration projects through collecting both qualitative and quantitative data can help inform actions throughout the project and serve as a reference to inform future research and restoration efforts.
This study is a part of the Northwest CASC project, An Interagency Collaboration to Develop and Evaluate New Science-Based Strategies for Great Basin Watershed Restoration in the Future. The Northwest Climate Hub also created a story map for this work.
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An Interagency Collaboration to Develop and Evaluate New Science-Based Strategies for Great Basin Watershed Restoration in the Future
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An Interagency Collaboration to Develop and Evaluate New Science-Based Strategies for Great Basin Watershed Restoration in the Future
This project was designed to use the combined strengths of the cooperators to address their concerns stemming from the degradation of arid environments in the Great Basin. The project aimed to identify the regional ecological and social costs and benefits of both immediate hydrologic modifications (low-profile constructed dams) and longer-term restoration of beavers (Castor canadensis) to these la
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