Garrett Costello & Kayla Trotter
People are working in the cool, clear water of a stream. In conversation, or in silence, they are performing the physical tasks that are required for a job such as this. Natural posts pounded into the bed of the stream are packed with earth and brush. Trees are felled and branches are gathered. They are placed with care and woven with intention. Shoveling, packing, lopping, sawing, and stuffing. A structure begins to take shape, and water begins to rise, and slow. They are building a beaver dam analog – meaning, humans doing their best impression of a beaver dam – with the hope that maybe one day the beaver will be doing it instead. Garrett Costello’s Symbiotic Restoration (SR) is at the forefront of the West’s quest to bring back the beaver, passionately working to restore California’s degraded stream and meadow ecosystems.
Founded in 2018, SR has focused primarily on low-tech, process-based restoration. This type of restoration uses mostly hand tools and works with organic materials to lend a helping hand to allow natural processes to take place. Beaver dam analogs (BDA) specifically work to restore degraded watersheds and capture sediment, allowing a stream to repair itself over time, connecting to its former floodplain. Water is slowed and dispersed over meadows, in turn restoring its health and vibrancy as a habitat for keystone species, such as beaver; all of which support an entire biological community and play a crucial role in creating wetland habitat and supporting biodiversity.
Beavers used to exist across the West in large numbers but fell victim to a variety of human-related ills. When settlers first arrived in the West, beavers were viewed as a currency. Their valuable pelts saw them hunted to near extinction. In the past and present day, beavers still behave as beavers do and flood streams that are near human resources. This pesky habit irks landowners, and often lethal means are used to mitigate their behaviors. Couple this with the loss of riparian habitats and food sources, and beavers have really got the short end of the stick. But in classic human fashion, we have done an about-face and are starting to realize that maybe we should leave it to beaver when it comes to engineering our waterways and see that the key to fixing our mess was chewing the log under our nose all along.
Five years of working in the creek has given Costello what he refers to as “beaver brain.” Touring a new system for the first time, he chooses the location for each dam, picturing them in his head and thoughtfully considering how water will flow across the landscape. This intuition will later be honed with measurements, math, meetings, meetings and more meetings. Sometimes years of preparation go into a project site, wading through difficult permitting issues, ironing out logistics and budgeting. Sometimes a project is conceived out of urgency: a fire has ripped through a riparian area and sediment needs to be captured before a significant rain, or a small window of weather where willow can be planted and take root on a winter day. No matter how the project comes to him, nothing gives him more pleasure and purpose to be out in the creek watching nature (after a little help) take it and run. You can watch the landscape change in real time out there, like a wound beginning to close. You can see that the land remembers how to heal.
There are many ways to build a BDA. Often, the first step in building a BDA is creating a post line, which is accomplished by slamming untreated fir posts into a stream bed with a post pounder. From there, longer materials are woven and layered in and out of the posts to create strength and to anchor brush and sod. Another technique, more commonly used in low energy systems, is building a postless structure. Willow and conifer branches layered with mud, sod and gravel create a dam that truly mimics that of a beaver. Materials are usually sourced onsite, or nearby. Some common materials used are willow, cottonwood, conifers, sage, sod and gravel.
The work season begins when the snow melts enough to start operations and ends when the snow is too thick to get to a project site, which usually means you can find the SR team working from March through November. In the off-season, SR prepares for upcoming projects in addition to riparian planting, which is often done in the late winter and early spring. Currently, SR is deep into the 2023 field season, where it will be implementing a variety of process-based restoration projects including BDAs, post fire restoration and hydraulic mine remediation.
Symbiotic Restoration started as just two people, Garrett Costello and his partner Kayla Trotter. Over the years they have continued to expand and have been fortunate to contribute to many projects across the state. Today, SR employs roughly 25 seasonal employees. The job is intensely physical, but meditative, and for many of SR’s hard working employees, deeply meaningful.
This article is the first of a seasonal series called Beaver Log. SR in collaboration with the NEC will provide updates on beaver restoration progress in the West, with the collective hope that beaver will be brought back and return as an existing keystone species. Stay tuned for news you can sink your teeth into!
If you would like to learn about volunteering with Symbiotic Restoration, visit www.symbioticrestoration.com/volunteer. To learn more about Symbiotic Restoration or process based restoration, visit: www.symbioticrestoration.com and www.calpbr.org.