{"id":718296,"date":"2026-06-22T01:02:27","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T01:02:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/718296\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T01:02:27","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T01:02:27","slug":"what-can-humans-learn-from-beavers-when-it-comes-to-drought-proofing-the-landscape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/718296\/","title":{"rendered":"What can humans learn from beavers when it comes to drought-proofing the landscape?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amid a field of \u201czombie willows\u201d in the Kawuneeche Valley within Rocky Mountain National Park, researchers and water providers are taking lessons from nature\u2019s ecosystem engineers to build drought resilience and restore wetlands.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis valley was once a really significant wetland in Colorado \u2026 it was just this really thriving beaver-willow-wetland complex, and very biologically diverse,\u201d said Kimberly Tekavec, the senior source water protection specialist for Northern Water. \u201cAnd over the last 100 years or so \u2014 and really significantly in the last few decades \u2014 this valley has been severely disrupted, and we\u2019re essentially witnessing, and have witnessed this ecosystem collapse.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Kawuneeche Valley exists just downstream from the Colorado River headwaters in the Never Summer Mountain Range, following the river through Rocky Mountain National Park to Shadow Mountain Reservoir near Grand Lake. As Tekavec described, the valley was once home to dense stands of tall willows, hundreds of beavers and wetlands that stretched eight miles long and half a mile wide.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA healthy and functioning wetland is a sponge,\u201d said Jeremy Shaw, a research scientist with Colorado State University who has led wetland and stream restoration efforts in the valley. \u201cIt is a fire break. It is a drought resilience machine. It is a water quality plant. It\u2019s a water treatment plant. So healthy, functional wetlands, particularly ones that support beavers, trap sediment nutrients, output clean, reliable water. It also slows down and spreads out the water.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over time, overgrazing by elk and moose, neglected irrigation systems, changing hydrology and other human activities disrupted this habitat, drove out beavers and transformed the valley into a dry grassland.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In an attempt to restore this landscape \u2014 and create a habitat beavers can, and will, return to \u2014 Northern Water, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado State University, Grand County, Rocky Mountain Conservancy, the town of Grand Lake and the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest and the Nature Conservancy came together and formed<\/a> the Kawuneeche Valley Restoration Collaborative in 2020. To date, the collaborative has raised over $4 million to not only construct its first project, but plan for three additional sites in the national park.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Once a thriving wetland, years of overgrazing, neglected irrigation systems, changing hydrology and other human activities transformed the Kawuneeche Valley into a dry grassland. Now, a collaborative is working to revitalize the valley, mimicking the work of beavers. A tour of water experts, state legislatures and media visited the collaborative\u2019s first project site in Rocky Mountain National Park on June 2, 2026. Ali Longwell\/Summit Daily News<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, June 2, representatives from Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado State University and Northern Water gave state water experts and elected officials a tour of the collaborative\u2019s first project site<\/a> at Beaver Creek to share how they\u2019re learning from nature and beavers to build resiliency amid the state\u2019s critical drought conditions<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHere, with all these structures and resistating these processes that are beaver-dominated systems (the goal) is to slow the water down, let it linger on the landscape longer and rehydrate these wetlands and just create healthy habitats and functional wetlands that provide clean, reliable water sources to downstream users,\u201d Shaw said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Beaver Creek Project Site\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"The Kawuneeche Valley is full of \u201czombie willows,\u201d ancient willow structures that were heavily browsed and are now surviving on long-held sugar stores in their roots. With the Kawuneeche Valley Restoration Collaborative\u2019s work in Rocky Mountain National Park, the goal is to revive these zombies. Ali Longwell\/Summit Daily News<\/p>\n

The first thing you notice at the Beaver Creek project site is a tall fence extending around a 35-acre perimeter. It\u2019s meant to prevent overgrazing by the park\u2019s ungulate populations, particularly moose \u2014 which Chris Clatterbuck, the natural resources program manager at Rocky Mountain National Park, called \u201ca perfectly-designed willow-eating machine.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the summer, they\u2019ll eat over 90% of their diet in willow,\u201d Clatterbuck said. \u201cAs a result, one moose is about the equivalent of 15 elk in terms of willow impact. They convert over 50 pounds of willow every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the reasons that the tall willows transformed into \u201czombie willows\u201d \u2014 ancient, heavily browsed willow structures that are surviving on long-held sugar stores \u2014 was overgrazing following Colorado\u2019s reintroduction of moose starting in the late 1970s<\/a>. Before 1978, there were no breeding populations of moose, and when they arrived without any natural predators \u2014 wolf or grizzlies \u2014 into a national park where hunting is banned, populations flourished and the willows declined, Clatterbuck said. Elk herds have also flourished and impacted the natural flora.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Without tall willows, beavers lost the large wood they needed to build dams and lodges, and they lost their winter food supply, Shaw said. \u201cSo they left.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In keeping out these ungulates \u2014 alongside the project\u2019s other elements to rehydrate the landscape and also replant willows and other riparian vegetation \u2014 the willows will regrow. \u201cWe\u2019re counting on reviving these zombies back to life,\u201d Clatterbuck said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Within the fence, the collaborative has done a lot of work to reinvigorate the landscape near the stream. This includes the creation of almost 30 structures that mimic beavers. Before the collaborative\u2019s work, Beaver Creek was a single tributary where one molecule of water would speed quickly to the Colorado River,\u201d Shaw said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNow we put all these speed bumps in there and slowed it down,\u201d he added. \u201cSo that, especially in a drought year like this, can create stream flow in the stream later in the summer where otherwise the stream might go dry.\u201d<\/p>\n

It also spreads the water across the surface, rehydrating the wetlands and increasing groundwater storage, decreasing sediment flows downstream in the reservoir \u2014 all of which has numerous benefits, not only for drought mitigation, but wildfire risk as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEast Troublesome Fire burned through a huge portion of our collections area,\u201d Tekavec said.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019ve spent, I think, over $65 million collectively, not just Northern Water, to date on fire watershed restoration. So we kind of see the benefits of this work as well being impactful for that type of resilience too.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Beaver Creek site is the first of four planned within the national park. The collaborative is set to begin work this fall on the second project downvalley called Onahu Creek. Beyond that, Shaw said the goal is to look for similar projects outside of the park with private landowners in the valley.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Jeremy Shaw, a research scientist with Colorado State University who has led wetland and stream restoration efforts in the valley, Chris Clatterbuck, the natural resources program manager at Rocky Mountain National Park, and Kimberly Tekavec, the senior source water protection specialist for Northern Water, walk toward the Beaver Creek project site for the Kawuneeche Valley Restoration Collaborative on June 2, 2026. Ali Longwell\/Summit Daily News<\/p>\n

Bringing back the beavers\u00a0<\/p>\n

The ultimate goal is to build a wetland and willow ecosystem worthy of beavers returning to. While there used to be hundreds of beavers in the valley, today there are only four beaver families residing across the national park\u2019s nearly 266,000 acres, according to Clatterbuck.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s so much better if beavers can do the work for us because they\u2019re relentless,\u201d Shaw said. \u201cThey have nothing else to do. They will just, day after day, maintain and expand these dam complexes. It is time-consuming and expensive for people to do that. So what we\u2019re hoping to do is jumpstart the system, maintain it as much as we need to get it to a place where they can then come in and take over.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

With this work ethic, beaver dams and structures are constantly evolving and \u201cbreathing,\u201d Shaw said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t just come and impose our ideas and apply recipes to the landscape, but we\u2019re here to learn and adapt to what the river teaches us,\u201d he added. \u201cI think that\u2019s an important approach for successful restoration of natural processes.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amid a field of \u201czombie willows\u201d in the Kawuneeche Valley within Rocky Mountain National Park, researchers and water…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":718297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":["post-718296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=718296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/718297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=718296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=718296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=718296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}