Creating Miracles in the Desert: Restoring Dixie Creek

this is just some additional footage of the poor condition habitat i i shot this to provide a baseline for comparison in the future i'll go back to the same spot in a couple years and retake this expect a dramatic difference this is that that bank right there and you can see the mountains a little bit there and here's the soft hills it's a little bit looking this way between 1988 and 1990 i took a whole lot of pictures out here i even took some video footage so one of the things that i've been most interested in doing over the last 30 years is coming back and retaking those pictures that's been the probably the most important way for me to be able to understand how much these streams have changed so this is a location that i stood here about just about 30 years ago but just about three decades ago and shot some video footage i i don't know how many how much longer i'll be able to do this but so far i've been able to try to get back to the same spot i was over 30 years ago and retake this photograph my name is carol evans i've been following streams in northeastern nevada since i became a bureau of land management biologists in 1988 i'm retired now but i'm still following streams the streams here have stories to tell you change the way cows graze on a stream the plants come back the beavers show up and that changes everything that is what happened on dixie creek a little stream near elko nevada this is dixie creek's story we say here in this part of the world that whiskey's for drinking water for fighting and it's sure true nevada is the driest state in the union and the water that we do get usually comes with snow maybe six or eight inches eight to ten inches precip annually water is really important to us [Music] prior to european settlement in the area it was thought that many of the drainages in dixie creek included would have flowed in massive flood plains that spanned the width of the valley then following european settlement and grazing in the area a lot of the vegetation was denuded on dixie creek the grazing prevented plants from being able to grow back and it basically persisted as kind of a big gravel bar [Music] 30 years ago some of our streams weren't really streams they were they were just sort of gravel areas where water would pass through quickly and most of that was because our grazing was wrong we didn't understand how to graze it at that time for the forage for cattle they prefer to stay in these riparian areas and eat the riparian plants [Music] many of the riparian plants are excellent cow food so if season long grazing occurs for too many consecutive years you'll basically wipe out all the riparian plants then you lose that armor or the stabilizing properties that those plants provide [Music] in the early 90s carol evans the fisheries biologist at the bureau of land management came and talked to us about maybe changing our grazing a little bit to try to get our cows out of the riparian zone during the hot season 1991 the agency i worked for built some fences so the grazing could be managed over the last three decades some of the cattle were in some of the area some of the time instead of all the cattle on all the area all the time things really change it can change for the better and we saw more water and we saw a lot more forage and grass and woody species and then beaver came along and that really changed things the beaver fantastically good at slowing down the water in a channel and dropping out sediment and building floodplains and storing water once you set that into motion everything changes [Music] seems like everywhere you go where you see a beaver dam on dixie creek you can see something interesting going on right here this little dam that's being created by the beaver has backed up the water and created a place for riparian habitat to develop against that cut bank it's also backed the water up in what was an old dry goalie and now that old dry goalie is turning into a wetland places like suzie creek and dixie creek and maggie creek they are healthy enough that even in a drought year they will have water and these places are hugely important to us in the drought year and and i think we'll continue to be so 2021 is what we call the severe drought in northeastern nevada so the amount of water that's out here now in drought conditions is absolutely amazing i say it's crazy wet that's because the beaver have come in they're storing all this water they've recharged the groundwater table and they've just kind of created a wetland paradise out here [Music] welcome to our drought [Music] my name is nicole burton and i've been a wildlife biologist for the bureau of land management for the last 21 years blm's mission is to manage for multiple use on public lands and to sustain the health diversity and productivity of public lands for present and future generations my name is gene cashy i'm a fourth generation nevadan i come from a family of outdoorsmen and hunters as a hunter i want to be able to access these public lands and see the wildlife thrive and without accessible water to wildlife you know our mule deer or waterfowl or chucker they will leave in search of water elsewhere part of dixie creek is managed by the elko district blm and it is utilized by the public for such things as cattle grazing and recreation but it is also managed for the continued use of the land for wildlife species riparian areas are an incredibly rare habitat in the great basin and in the arid western portions of the united states in general while the riparian areas make up only a tiny fraction of the landscape surface they support around 80 percent of the wildlife and the biodiversity that's found in the great basin my name is kami evans and i grew up here in spring creek nevada right over there underneath the ruby mountains so i always saw pictures of it when it was still very much in its first phase of recovery and as i started coming out here more i could see the progress after a few years and when i look at it now i mean it's a completely different stream and i'm amazed at the transformation to me dixie creek is an incredible story it's an incredible story of hope and it's an incredible story of what can be the lessons that have been learned on dixie creek with altered grazing management and allowing riparian plants to gain that foothold and grow it's not new or it's not particularly complex the hope that i have is dixie creek shows an incredible story of cooperation between ranchers land managers sportsmen and it could just offer a better future for all of us [Music] it wasn't super big changes from us just changes in timing of grazing when our cows were in certain spots and how long they stayed there it's it's a thing that with a little help we can do pretty easy and it benefits us all and i'm pretty proud of it i think it's easy to feel overwhelmed with a lot of negativity that surrounds you know environmental issues right now but seeing this transformation gives me hope for my generation and for future generations this is proof that we can repair our lands and that we can continue to enjoy them dixie creek doesn't have to be an exclusive or unique story there are so many drainages throughout the great basin that have the potential to have this same repairing and function and provide this amazing habitat that's such a rare resource in nevada nevada's getting drier but dixie creek is getting wetter every stream has a story to tell what it once was what it can be again how grazing can be managed to get the plants to grow back which attracts the beaver and how together those two things can offer hope for a better future [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: Intermountain West Joint Venture

Views: 507,410

Keywords:

Id: kSctr0aQOso

Length: 10min 11sec (611 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 27 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Ecstatic_Carpet]

/u/stefeyboy I would recommend writing a description of what the video is and not just posting a link with no info.

It is nice to see a wetland restoration success story.

[u/Koala_eiO]

My takeaway from the video is that to restore an area, you just need to stop destroying it. John D. Liu's documentary shows how China and Jordan saved regions by forbidding grazing.

Question regarding the beavers and the dam: it's great for the area upstream, but what happens below the dam? Surely it gets drier and overall you cannot help an area without damaging another?

[u/warrenfgerald]

Its amazing how many problems are tied back to the simple fact that people like hamburgers.

[u/Spackman]

Now think about the fact that we're 300 million beaver short of what we should be in the US

[u/[deleted]]

Stop breeding cows and a huge number pf ecosystems will start to recover, instead of continuously perishing and getting destroyed