Benefits for Beavers and People
About the MW Beaver Partnership
Working with People and Beavers to Improve Ecosystem Health and Reduce Beaver-Human Conflict in the Mid-Willamette Valley
What We Do at MW Beaver Partnership
Help Landowners and Land Managers Co-Exist Alongside Beavers
Facilitate Conservation and Restoration Efforts
Mitigate the Potential Negative Impacts of Beaver Behavior
Improve Ecosystem Health
We Are A Group of Partners Dedicated To Exploring The Ecological And Community Benefits Of Beaver-Based Restoration
We are made up of six core member entities and engage with a diversity of stakeholders.
We want to tap into the huge potential of beaver-based restoration to generate a cascade of ecosystem benefits. The MWBP is conducting fine-scale habitat analysis across five Willamette subwatersheds to identify the best places to target beaver based restoration and/or conservation activities and to conduct in depth community partner engagement to better understand concerns and address social barriers to promoting beavers across the landscape.
The MWBP is engaged in promoting community and landscape resiliency by providing tools for beaver conflict mitigation, and by restoring or enhancing beaver habitat in ways that maximize benefits both to the local ecology and to human communities.
The service areas covered by MWBP are hosts to ESA-listed Chinook and winter steelhead, as well as a wide array of fish and wildlife species that have co-evolved with beaver.
Human infrastructure development, stream alterations and decimated beaver populations have contributed to a dramatic decline in stream complexity over the past two centuries. Highly complex streams are integral to supporting salmonids and other aquatic species throughout the stages of their life cycle as well as promoting watershed resilience.
Restoring beaver populations and habitats where appropriate, utilizing mitigation strategies for beaver conflicts, and simulating dam-building activities can increase stream complexity and its associated watershed benefits.
Ritner Creek, tributary to the Luckiamute River
A beaver pond in Hook Creek, tributary to the Luckiamute River
MWBP’s initiative is to promote beaver habitat and coexistence strategies through diverse stakeholder partnerships.
The MWBP is leveraging the support of researchers, state agencies, federal agencies, and conservation organizations to develop a social-ecological road map for promoting beaver habitat and coexistence strategies. MWBP is implementing paired Habitat Assessment (HA) and engagement projects to promote community involvement in our work.
The areas covered by MWBP partners include the ceded lands of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde and the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians, as well as parts of Marion, Linn, Benton, Lincoln, and Polk counties.
