POBR25 Day 3

 

On day 3 we really got into the field work at the Swamp Creek in the Yakama Nation (YN) closed area. It was good because I never considered helping out beavers even though I know they are a keystone species. I guess it never crossed my mind that everyone likes the beaver from trappers (I guess they don’t, but they get em you know?), bears snack on em… seems like scientists or wildlife people really like them and the Yakama Nation has stories that carry significant lessons in their daily lives. So, I really hope this low-tech restoration will help entice the beavers and stimulate the response the YN Fisheries is looking for. Huge thank you to Jenette and David for getting us out there and letting us help by helping out with building the actual dam using the mud, soil, grass wads, logs, and fenceposts. There was a lot of grass and there was a lot of orange-tinted soil which I learned today was a good signature of wetlands. I have an interest in all of the science relating to preserving or helping the natural environment reshape and grow into the higher quality habitats. It wasn’t super-hot either- thankfully. I was expecting the mosquitoes and the sun to bear down on us and really eat us up but that wasn’t the case today. We also collected water samples from the Swamp Creek and this body of water was much different than the previous. This was visibly much healthier as it had an abundance of grass and little to no canopy cover, but the region was burnt by the Cougar Creek in 2015. It is saddening to hear the stories of how lush and green the forest was and taking a look now you see nothing but patches of green littered in the toothpicks of burnt trees with some that are piled up. There were stressed out baby pines that were yellow and less than a meter tall. We cut some of these to help create the log barriers and the speedbumps that should help the streams accumulate the water into the wetland ponds. Back to the water sampling, I do like that science too and we haven’t really talked about our research posters yet so I’m ready for that. Anyways, we are off to Spokane tomorrow for another round of science so I’m ready for it. I am the right amount of tired after today, so I am ready to go relax a little bit.

 Pahto looking beautiful! 

 Beaver Log Barrier 

 Initial Pond from the low-tech restoration dam


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