Beavers could be Colorado's secret weapon to cleaning rivers and abandoned mines

[Music] the san juan mountains probably have 15 000 or so abandoned mines there's about 25 000 in the state of colorado and 200 000 in the western u.s all of the mines here are legacy mine sites there's no real active mining in our county we have several hundred of them that are abandoned and in need of cleanup for the past 25 or 30 years there's been efforts to clean up these mines but there's a lot of them and takes a lot of funding so now we have a lot more involvement from the u.s epa and the other federal land agencies the blm and the forest service are all working together to clean up the highest priority sites in this watershed more recently in the last few years with the greater emphasis on mine cleanup specifically here in silverton in the upper animus watershed there's been a collective interest in understanding how supporting and increasing beaver habitat and populations within this watershed could potentially improve the overall watershed health but also maybe help address cleaning up some of these legacy mines if we think about the landscape of western north america the western u.s prior to european arrival and expansion beaver populations numbered in the hundreds of millions about 1800 through 1830 or 40 the populations went down to 10 000 to 100 000. by removing those beavers off the landscape we changed the whole structure and function of these watersheds [Music] beavers are often considered a keystone species a species that creates an ecosystem for other species plants and animals to live in and in particular here in colorado they say between 70 and 90 of all wildlife requires either access to a river or a wetland or a riparian system near water and so they attract and increase the biodiversity of wildlife coming into those areas which is really important to the overall ecosystem health here beavers build dams along tributary creeks or on the sides of these river systems and by slowing the water down in some of these tributary headwater areas it helps to settle out excess sediments and suspended materials that are in the water so it's kind of acts as a natural settling or filtration system when that water sits in the wetlands and the ponds associated with the beaver habitat that water soaks into the ground and moves through the ground towards the river it also is naturally cleaned with changing climate and warmer conditions we've seen smaller snowpack here and less runoff each year and as a result some of our rivers are getting drying out and shrinking in the late summer and fall and we believe that by increasing the beaver habitat in these headwaters we can capture the snow melt over a longer period of time in the summer and slowly release it to the rivers so by late summer there's more water in the rivers than there may be now the benefit specifically to mining that is of interest is in these headwater areas we have all these abandoned mines many of them have been left for 50 60 or more years as a result they are in various states of deterioration or collapse and so many of these mine entrances have collapsed and the water draining out of the mines can back up behind those and at unknown times that water can naturally release from the mine tunnels and can carry a lot of discolored and metal-laden waters rapidly into the rivers and with more wetlands and beaver ecosystems in the system there's a greater chance that an event like that an unplanned event that can happen naturally at any time is able to be captured in these in these pond systems and settled out before it reaches the river and travels long distances downstream we've used engineering as we've settled say the western u.s engineering has been a huge part of how we manage our water we've been building dams and reservoirs and hydropower and bridges and infrastructure you know for many decades and when you take a step back you realize that beavers are nature's engineer they know how to slow water down dam it up pond it move it in different directions redirect it control its rates and i think there's a lot to be learned from nature's engineers in terms of how we should be thinking about our interaction with the natural environment and say controlling things such as water resources you

Channel: Rocky Mountain PBS

Views: 6,149

Keywords: public media, colorado, rocky mountain pbs, beavers, telluride, colorado nature, colorado wildlife, mining towns, environmentalism, climate change, biodiversity, hunting, animal science, hydrologist

Id: RR41jjj_hug

Length: 5min 31sec (331 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 26 2021