Leave It to Beavers – Renewing rivers one rodent at a time
Originally from: https://www.patagonia.ca/stories/leave-it-to-beavers/story-149108.htmlBy: Amanda Monthei All photos by Greg Mionske It’s barely above 50 degrees in a mountain meadow at the headwaters of the John Day River, deep in the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon. Dew soaks the ground, and the consensus is that today’s work conditions are already significantly better than yesterday’s. “It was the hardest day this year,” says Alex, a 19-year-old Northwest Youth Corps crew member sipping coffee from a mug covered in faded stickers. A random thunderstorm blew through yesterday morning and caught him without his rain jacket. Weather and morale have improved significantly in the last 24 hours. Alex and the rest of the four-person crew from the conservation service and job-training program, as well as three Trout Unlimited employees, pull on mud-caked boots and waders, finish coffees and collect their tools—chainsaws, an errant bundle of shovels, towers of five-gallon buckets, branch loppers and wooden posts shaped like enormous pencils, shouldered two at a time. “If all goes according to plan, a passing beaver might see these human-made dams, complemented by the soft, pooling water they love, and think, ‘This is nice … but I could do better.’” Shifts start at 7 a.m., and although […]
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