Hey Beaver Brigaders, this is Cooper Lienhart, fellow human beaver and former SLO Beaver Brigade education & outreach coordinator and restoration director. You may have been wondering why you haven’t heard from me in a while, and it’s because I have been busy starting a new, local Process-Based Restoration business called Nature’s Engineers. We are based here in San Luis Obispo County, and our goal is to serve the Central Coast. Our mission is to restore rivers and creeks by mimicking and supporting beavers, the original “nature’s engineers”. Keep reading to the end to hear about our first local project!
Cooper Lienhart, founder of Nature’s Engineers
The vision behind this business is to bring healing to the Earth, and I have learned from the beavers that the best way to do that is to partner with water. Beavers, through their dam building, are able to slow and hold water, which creates lush wetland ecosystems. In the American West, it is more critical than ever that we hold water on our land. Since European colonization and the overhunting of beavers, the West has lost a staggering 80-90% of its wetland ecosystems, leaving us with a more arid, fire prone, and fragile landscape. Not only do wetlands allow water to slow, sink and recharge our freshwater supply, they also offer a myriad of other benefits for humans and wildlife such as fire resiliency, improved habitat for Steelhead Trout and other wildlife, better water quality, and storing carbon from the atmosphere.
If the Central Coast were full of beavers, as it once was, we would be in a better situation environmentally, and I wouldn’t be starting this business. But, we currently have too few beavers, and many of the creeks that used to be their habitat are now incised and degraded. So, it is up to us humans to support the local beavers as best we can and begin restoring their habitat so they can boost their population and return to the rivers and creeks where they are supposed to be.
The crew on our first BDA we ever built together. From left to right: Austin (Swift Water Design), Nick, Dom (SWD), Sara, Ayeen, Cooper, Charlie, Joe, Arturo. Monterey County, CA, Santa Lucia Conservancy.
But how do we do it? Well, the same way the beavers would! We can mimic beavers by building human-made beaver dams called Beaver Dam Analogs (BDAs). These BDAs consist of all natural materials, such as local vegetation, soil and gravel, and untreated wooden posts, and are built using only hand tools and human labor. We also follow the beavers’ teachings on where the BDAs should be placed in the channel – looking for lower energy high points with sediment deposition, or areas where a side channel could be reactivated. Then, just like beavers, we build a whole series of dams and continue to go back for several years to maintain and build upon our structures over time.
Now, I know you are thinking “will the beavers take over the BDAs?” And the answer is hopefully yes! There have now been many cases across the West where beavers have taken over BDAs and extended them to a far greater length and height, creating vast ponds and truly putting our human work to shame. This is the best-case scenario, for the beavers work every night and have 5 million years of experience over us, and I don’t worry about the beavers taking our jobs, because there are plenty of other degraded creeks that need our help.
Beaver Dam Analog
The goal of this restoration technique is to reintroduce the natural processes back into the ecosystem, so that we can more effectively utilize the energy of the system and allow it to build itself back to self-sustainability. This is why we call it Process Based Restoration (PBR). Our team has been training with another crew, Swift Water Design, who has been doing this work for over 6 years now, across the West from Monterey County, to the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and even up into Oregon. We have assisted in building over 500 BDAs on over 10 stream-miles. We also have training with The Beaver Institute in implementing beaver coexistence devices, so if you have a beaver on your property that is causing flooding or chewing a favorite tree, we can help you implement a solution that allows the beavers to survive and your property to thrive.
Proud human-beavers showing off their completed BDA and head-cut erosion treatment near Bly, Oregon. From left to right: Cooper Lienhart, Arturo Guevara, Scott Brown
Now, we have exciting news, because we are set to begin our first local project in SLO County this very month! We’re working with the City of San Luis Obispo on Johnson Ranch Open Space to build 30 BDAs on Dry Creek, which is a tributary to SLO Creek. There are active Steelhead Trout in the creek, so our goals are to improve the creek’s water holding capacity, and thus also improve the habitat for the Steelhead. Currently, much of the creek runs dry in the summer and fall, so we are eager to see if we can enhance the stream to continue flowing for longer into the year. This is part of a larger restoration project with the yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash Tribe, performing hand-tended harvesting and seed sowing as well as low-intensity cultural burns with the aid of Cal Fire, SLO County Fire Dept and SLO City Fire. 300 Native trees will also be planted to enhance the riparian area. For more info on the project, you can read more here
I am hopeful that this will be the first of many PBR projects in our area. Nature’s Engineers is only the third PBR company in all of California and the only one located in the southern half of the state. I am incredibly thankful to the Beaver Brigade and my other mentors for supporting me in this dream to make a healthier, wetter, more resilient Central Coast. If you are interested in learning more, you can check out our website naturesengineers.com.
One stick at a time,
Cooper