Stories from the field: What's it worth to prevent damage that would take a century to repair?
James Rogers, general manager of the Winecup Gamble ranch, watched in shock as water poured through the breached dam. He estimated the flow at half the volume of Niagara Falls. It raged through the valley of the ranch and over everything in its path for four days. It changed the ranch. It changed the people who live and work there.
James Rogers, beaver dam of cattails on the Winecup Gamble ranch.
The Winecup Gamble ranch is located in Nevada about 45 miles south of the IdahoNevada state line. The Institute did not introduce beaver there as part of its Building Riparian Resilience through Beaver Restoration program. No, they just showed up. And when they did, James Rogers found their work in the streams thought-provoking as he watched vegetation and wildlife return to the landscape where the beavers built dams. But he also found himself swearing at the beavers, as they repeatedly built a dam under a bridge and flooded a road.
So he contacted Seventh Generation Institute to learn about solving the beaver problems while keeping the benefits and thus began a terrific partnership. The Institute worked with James Rogers and his staff to manage beaver and use them to rebuild and restore streams through one of the Institute’s workshops “Living with Beaver on Your Ranch.”
The winter of 2016-2017, brought record breaking snow to many places in Idaho, Nevada and around the West. And when spring came and the snow melted and ran off – faaaaast – it broke more records and broke a lot of other things too.
At the Winecup Gamble, enormous amounts of spring melt water began collecting behind a dam. Built by Utah Power, the dam had been on the ranch since the early 1900s. Much water streamed down the spillway, but the spillway couldn’t move water out as fast as it was coming in. The water crept relentlessly higher.
And then it began - the Nevada version of Niagara Falls. Water poured over the top of the dam, eroding and crumbling the top. More water poured over. And more dam material crumbled into the accelerating flow. More and more until the dam was completely breached. Water filled the valley. It covered the roads and fences. It dragged boulders and vehicles and equipment with it. It chased the wildlife and livestock to whatever high ground they could find. It flooded and cut off the homes of the ranch workers, who had to be evacuated by helicopter. It washed out most of the beaver dams, built of just cat tails and mud in this land of sagebrush and grass and nary a tree.
James Rogers and his staff knew that floods notoriously scour and erode western lands and riparian areas, often leaving damage that shows no sign of healing in human life times. They watched the flood, rubbed their eyes in astonishment and wondered anxiously what would be left when it was over.
When the flood was done laughing at everything humans had built, the ranch staff started assessing the damage, cleaning up and repairing. There was an area of erosion immediately below the breached dam, as was to be expected. Fences pushed over, yes. Drowned animals, yes. Equipment and homes damaged, yes and yes.
But the landscape and streamscape were surprisingly intact. The stream channel had not eroded beyond the area immediately below the dam. There was no new “Grand Canyon of the Winecup Gamble” cut into the valley floor. Where the waters had spread beyond the stream channel, sagebrush and grasses sported hats of flood-tossed vegetation, now drying in the sun, but little damage. Indeed, there were almost no signs of a flood.
How could these ranch lands be in such fine fettle for having gone through the equivalent of a thousand
year flood?
The answer lay in the visionary management of James Rogers and simple things that he had done to improve the ranch. Simple, yes, but also blazing smart. He refined his grazing management to ensure that vegetative cover was present across the ranch. So when the waters came, the vegetation diffused the flood power and held the soil against erosion. Just as important, he got good information on beaver, learned to manage them and left them in the streams. The water they ponded enormously increased the vegetation carpet throughout the riparian corridor – the area most vulnerable to severe flood damage. So in this case, the riparian corridor laughed back at the flood and went right on being a healthy riparian area full of plants and fish and wildlife
as if nothing had happened.
Of course the Institute played a part in this success story by working with James on his beaver management. But it wouldn’t have happened without his big picture thinking.
What’s it worth to prevent damage that would take a century to repair?
Everything.