Click the link to read the article on The Aspen Times website (Josie Taris). Here’s an excerpt:
April 7, 2024
The White River National Forest and Pitkin County Health Rivers and Streams gathered habitat data on the native keystone species in the Roaring Fork watershed throughout the summer of 2023.
“We didn’t have a huge sample size, but we feel like we learned enough to take some stabs at things. My impression is that there is some greater capacity on the landscape than what we have at the moment,” said Clay Ramey, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). “And there are places on the landscape that we might be able to make a little better by putting posts or BDAs, or structures in the creek, that beavers can glom on to, we could put beavers in those places and they might be likely to do well.”
[…]
At the random sites, they identified 47 dams and 6 lodges. Only about half, 53 sites, showed signs of current or past beaver utilization, through damns, chewed trees, and other evidence. The team concluded that the dispersion of beavers in the subwatersheds was wide and sparse. Vegetation at the sites varied if the site was occupied or unoccupied by beavers. Aspens, willows, and cottonwoods were prevalent on occupied sites. Conifers were more prevalent on unoccupied sites…Occupied sites were flatter with wider banks, flatter slopes, and lower elevation, but Ramey said that these high-elevation beavers did not always avoid high elevation…
[Lisa] Tasker and Ramsey said that a long-term goal of this study is to help the public learn to live among beavers, while also identifying potential relocation spots as necessary.
