Pine Creek Comes Back to Life

It's all about the beaver

I have been attending the Oregon Natural Desert Association (ONDA) annual meeting every year since 2005.  This event, spent at OMSI's Hancock Field Station near Clarno, is a highlight of every year.  I enjoy catching up with friends over a good beer (or two) and hanging out by the fire listening to music while the stars come out.  I also enjoy the Saturday work party, a fixture of the annual meeting from the beginning.  In the early years we concentrated on removing old, obsolete barbed wire fencing while in the past several years our attention has shifted to riparian restoration along Pine Creek.  I still miss the fence removal projects, but seeing Pine Creek resplendent in lush riparian vegetation and festooned with an astonishing number of beaver dam/ponds, I really came to appreciate the fruits of our labors.  The creek is looking great.  There is a long way to go, of course.  It will take a multi-generational process to erase the revenges of decades of questionable land management practices and over grazing, but this little intermountain west creek valley seems to have turned a corner and is now meandering in the right direction.

We planted those willows!

Can't let the beavers get everything

Riparian vegetation coming back