Restoring Natural Processes

Aquatic restoration, using techniques that mimic natural processes such as beaver damming, is one way local practitioners are working together to restore riverscapes and bring back a spring blanket of blue camas to the landscape, described in part one of the series. When we rely on nature as our guide to show us the way, the results are powerful.

Many of the aquatic restoration projects use techniques that mimic, promote, and sustain natural processes. A popular restoration tool is the beaver dam analog, or BDA, a man-made structure meant to mimic natural beaver dams. In Gold Creek, BDAs are being used to encourage beavers to return to the landscape and begin engineering the river in the way they know best-by creating more dams to pool and store water.

"When you put a large piece of wood in a creek or install a BDA, you force the water to go around it, which creates more energy in the system. It's going to hit the stream bank and erode it, and that's a good thing," said Romanko, "streams are dynamic, and we want them to change and evolve. We want streams to meander, which slows the flow, and lets water seep into the ground."

Wild Horse Creek restoration project

The partnership's first aquatic restoration project took place on Wild Horse Creek. For the first half of the 1900s, the meadows surrounding Wild Horse Creek were used as a pasture and hayfields by the U.S. Forest Service and a few hardy homesteaders. This use caused the meadow and streamside vegetation to change from camas and other native plants to pasture grasses.

In October 2022, 17 BDAs were installed in Wild Horse Creek. There was evidence that beavers used to inhabit that stretch of the stream, and everyone hoped the industrious rodents would return to the site once it had more suitable habitat for them.

After the first project in Wild Horse Creek, BLM and its partners had figured out the tools and the teams necessary to complete additional projects. In 2023, 30 more BDAs were installed on Wild Horse Creek. The next spring, the meadow erupted in camas blooms. Romanko noted that every time she returns to the meadow, the diversity of vegetation continues to increase.

"The camas bulbs were in this meadow for a hundred years, but were greatly reduced. As the floodplain re-wets, camas will return, and there were willows that were sitting dormant in the soil that are finally sending up shoots again." Today, the system is greening up and holding more water.

Thanks in part to a trapping moratorium enacted by TNC in 2022, the beavers also returned, creating a second channel in the meadow that spread out and dispersed water, reconnecting the stream with five acres of its floodplain. Beavers had even begun to use the BDAs, taking grass from upland meadows and shoving it into the human-made structures to strengthen and adapt them.

Wild Horse Creek photographed from above. The channel to the right was restored the year prior to this photo being taken. Credit: BLM

BLM and its partners are now looking forward to more aquatic restoration projects across the Gold Creek watershed. Cow Creek, a tributary of Gold Creek, is poised for investment in 2024.

Cow Creek restoration project

Cow Creek is designated as a habitat for Montana's state fish, the westslope cutthroat trout. Despite this designation, the channelized creek now flows like a firehose in the springtime and dries up in the late summer creating a hindrance to fish passage and stranding juvenile fish. Romanko says that increasing quality fish habitat is a primary goal of the Cow Creek project.

Cow Creek's confluence with Gold Creek is already home to beavers, and hopes are high that they will expand their habitat and move upstream when restoration takes hold. Beavers will increase the amount of time water is retained in the watershed.

Romanko commented that "the fish benefits are incredible, the drought and wildfire resiliency opportunities are also pretty powerful in this landscape." Each extra acre foot of water held on the landscape reduces late-summer water restrictions, and rewetting the floodplain creates vital habitat for native vegetation like camas to flourish.

Restoration projects in the area are ongoing, and BLM, The Nature Conservancy, The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, the National Wildlife Federation, and other partners plan to continue enhancing the health of the landscape by restoring streams in the Gold Creek watershed.

"When you put the whole story together, once you have the added structures and floodplain connectivity and the active floodplain is growing, it will make vegetation respond and we will get big deciduous trees again," Romanko said, "I hope by the time I retire this will be a totally different landscape-that's the dream."

Click here to read part one of this series.

Rose Vejvoda (She/her/hers) is a graduate student at Northern Arizona University, where she is a candidate for a Professional Master of Science in Climate Science and Solutions, and a graduate certificate in Greenhouse Gas Accounting. Rose received her undergraduate degree from Montana State University where she studied English Writing, and Sustainability Studies. She has a passion for using effective storytelling to build relationships, uplift local communities, and help people feel connected to the natural world. Rose wrote this story while she was a Freshwater Ecosystems Intern at Natural Resources Defense Council.

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.