Are the Fish Dammed? People, Beavers & Fish

Are the Fish Dammed? People, Beavers & Fish Hosts: Alexa Whipple (Methow Beaver Project) & Sara Porterfield (Trout Unlimited) Presenters: Alexa Whipple, Joe Weirich (Methow Beaver Project), Elyssa Kerr (Beavers NW), Nick Walrath (Trout Unlimited), Ben Nugent (USDA APHIS), Sandy Walczyk (Blue Hill Heritage Trust) Beavers and fishes evolved together over 8 million years, inhabiting complex wetlands and riparian ecosystems rivaling the diversity of coral reefs and rainforests. Beavers, in their historic abundance, undoubtedly played an extensive role in creating and maintaining those complex ecosystems on a watershed scale. Today, those same watersheds are modified, simplified, and largely dysfunctional, and nearly unrecognizable from the dramatic changes brought by human priorities and objectives. In the last 400+ years, people have endeavored to control rivers and streams in North America for flood management, farming, land development and power generation. Simplifying our watersheds for ease of management and financial enterprise has been disastrous for ecological systems and is not creating a sustainable future for humanity either. Preserving our rivers and streams in stable degraded and simplified states ultimately will not meet our needs or the needs of the many species we hope to recover from the brink of extinction, especially our fishes. Can beavers help recover the habitat complexity that many fishes need? Absolutely! Does it require creativity, adaptability, training, compromise and commitment to long-term management? Yes, indeed. But it’s worth it because it’s working! The Fishes & Beavers community is rapidly adapting and evolving strategies to accommodate different fish species, diverse ecohydrologic systems, and different human priorities in degraded watersheds. This session will explore the why’s and how’s of beaver and fish coexistence, share case studies of successful projects from the Pacific Northwest, Montana, and Coastal Maine, identify challenges and some solutions in regulatory and policy environments, and discuss a positive future yet to come for Beavers & Fishes.