2024 Community Field Tour

In early October, the Madison Conservation District (MCD) partnered with the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) and Marina Smith of Three Dollar Ranch to host a free field tour discussing beaver activity around Three Dollar Bridge and the Lower Madison River.

Maia Schweikert, with MCD, kicked things off by delivering a short presentation about 310 permitting and projects on the stream. After that, Kyle Wonders with NWF shared with attendees about beaver biology, the positive and negative impacts that beavers can have on the landscape, and strategies to mitigate beaver-human conflict.

Kyle then led the group to a nearby culvert that had been subject to recurring clogging from beavers. In an effort to stop the hard-to-maintain clogging, Kyle had recently installed a beaver exclusion fence at this site to prevent beavers from accessing the culvert inlet, therefore preventing further plugging. While at the site, Marina, shared her experiences dealing with beaver conflict on the ranch she manages, including taking attendees to an active beaver lodge, and dam upstream.

To round out the tour, Shelby Weigand with NWF, provided attendees with background about low-tech process based restoration methods, including beaver-dam analogs (BDAs). Beaver dam analogs are often installed in streams with the purpose of slowing or redirecting the flow of water. This can be useful for creating wildlife habitat (especially for fish), replenishing groundwater, and reducing sedimentation. Community members also got the opportunity to put their beaver mimicry to the test by building mock BDAs.