Partnering With Beavers to Restore Colorado’s Mountain Wetlands

We are pleased to present this program of the Brooksher Watershed Institute in partnership with the Roaring Fork Conservancy. Mark Beardsley & Jessica Doran, founders of Ecometrics, will discuss how wetland riverscapes were severely degraded when beavers, a quintessential keystone species, were hunted to near extinction during the fur trade of the colonial era. Even though the fur trade ended abruptly two centuries ago, beaver populations have been slow to recover and the wetlands remain impoverished. Can we restore these valuable habitats mimicking, promoting, and sustaining the keystone natural aquatic ecosystem engineer? With recent examples from the Colorado mountains, this talk explores how we are learning to partner with beavers to restore wetland riverscapes.

Registration for this program opens Dec 15