Update Sep 2025: South Fork Crooked River Vegetation Recovery
"Beavers Don’t Eat BDAs" — A young beaver family settled in a BDA complex here in 2025, though only after enough vegetation had taken root to support them. The BDAs had been in place for 10 years, with beavers passing through but never staying. The video below shows:
00:00 – Overview of the complex, with well-established vegetation and beaver forage
00:49 – Upstream BDA with ponding and exposed gravels
01:10 – Close-up of dam construction on the 2016 BDA
Summer 2023 our survey crews documented this "lifescape from landscape" transformation underway on the South Fork Crooked River. Just 6" to 8" annual precipitation in this subbasin but riparian tree planting has pollinators, songbirds and life returning in this 1.5 miles stretch of stream.
Soon, caging will be removed and migrating beavers should settle and stay. No permits required, just mother nature.
