- USU researchers monitor beavers to preserve water in Utah and beyond.
- Professor Joe Wheaton's team uses beaver dams to slow runoff and retain water.
- Their work, featured on PBS, offers solutions for farmers facing water shortages.
LOGAN — The work of a Utah State University team — as well as one of nature's engineers — is preventing farmland from drying up in Utah and across the west.
By observing and studying beavers, Utah State Riverscapes professor Joe Wheaton is teaching students how to provide solutions to local farmers.
Wheaton told KSL he became interested in this kind of work when he noticed a change to the creek that was around when he was growing up and ranching cattle. He said it previously flowed year-round, but now it typically dries up in June or early July.
So Wheaton switched his focus from improving grazing practices to focusing on what he called the real problem — the water situation.
Beavers: A necessary nuisance
Though the animal can be seen as a nuisance because of their dams washing out roads or flooding streams, their ability to spread water is unmatched.
"If we look at the areas where beavers are building the dams, we call it 'the water magic trick.' The water will stay around longer," Wheaton said.
Here's how. By strategically building their dams, beavers help the land retain water longer. They're helping the Utah valleys act more like sponges. There isn't actually more water; the dams just help slow the spring runoff.
Wheaton and his team trap beavers and keep them healthy in USU's "beaver bunkhouse." Then, they reintroduce the beavers to land where the water is running dry.
Their work is featured on PBS' series "Shared Planet."
And it's been successful. In one instance, Wheaton's team helped build starter dams for an Idaho cattle rancher who'd had unsuccessfully tried to bring beaver back to his area.
"We built, like, 25 fake dams to give them some choices," Wheaton said. "They used all of them, rebuilt a bunch of them better than we could, and then they built another 250."
Can a creature as small as a beaver, or even hundreds of them, help to fill the Great Salt Lake? The answer is no, but that doesn't mean the work of the resourceful rodent can't still benefit Utahns in a very big way when the big storms or large wildfires come.
"When the big floods come, it makes those less damaging. And then as the sponges fill up and, as wildfires spread through an area, these act as firebreaks," he said. "(These are) also places where even firefighters are going to for safety, (where) livestock and wildlife go to for refuge.
Wheaton's work is being done with the help of beavers across Utah, the West, and the rest of the country.
You can see this work on the PBS series "Shared Planet," which premiered on Wednesday. It streams free on PBS.org and on the PBS app for 30 days.
