Using Beavers in Placer County

I like this intiative:

The creek bed, altered by decades of agricultural use, had looked like a wildfire risk. It came back to life far faster than anticipated after the beavers began building dams that retained water longer.

“It was insane, it was awesome,” said Lynnette Batt, the conservation director of the Placer Land Trust, which owns and maintains the Doty Ravine Preserve. “It went from dry grassland. .. to totally revegetated, trees popping up, willows, wetland plants of all types, different meandering stream channels across about 60 acres of floodplain,” she said.

The Doty Ravine project cost about $58,000, money that went toward preparing the site for beavers to do their work. In comparison, a traditional constructed restoration project using heavy equipment across that much land could cost $1 to $2 million, according to Batt.

The project is supported by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, through its Partners for Fish and Wildlife program. Since 2014, it has worked with the Placer Land Trust to restore and enhance habitat for migratory birds, waterfowl, salmon and steelhead by unleashing the beavers, a keystone species.

Damion Ciotti, a restoration biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who led the project, said he predicted the Doty Ravine project would take a decade to reconnect the stream to the floodplain, but to his surprise, it was restored in just three years.