Wildcat Bluff Discovery Center, Ogallala Life looks to beavers, natural infrastructure for the water future of the High Plains

AMARILLO, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) – During both the Ogallala Commons “Stewarding our Water Future” conference in March 2024 and its follow-up field day at the Wildcat Bluff Discovery Center in April, water management officials, scientists, landowners, agriculture producers, stakeholders and casual citizens gathered to discuss groundwater and ecological rehabilitation on the High Plains in the face of the steady death of the Ogallala Aquifer and shifting climate conditions.

While there were many conversations focused on coalition building, regenerative strategies and the dire need for change and action for the area’s ecological future, a favorite topic during both events was the impact of a creature scarcely seen on the High Plains. Variously considered a beloved franchise mascot or a destructive pest, the experts gathered to talk about the future of the Texas Panhandle and High Plains roundly encouraged others to consider the North American beaver.

As noted by Texas Parks & Wildlife Magazine’s Louie Bond, “No other animals — well, besides humans — change their environment more drastically than these chubby, paddle-tailed rodents. Whether that determined construction work makes the beaver a hero or a pariah depends on whom you ask.”

While often assumed the enemy of engineers and agricultural producers alike, and not commonly recorded around the Texas Panhandle after its population dwindled in the 1850s due to excessive trapping, scientists and ecological experts at both the March conference and April field day posited that the continent’s largest rodent is an asset and architectural design tutor for floodplain management and restoration.

Ogallala Life Projects Coordinator Warren Thetford and Ogallala Life Executive Director Will Masters described at the April field day that beavers have been part of the development of Natural Infrastructure in Dryland Streams (NIDS), which are beaver-built structures, or human-built Beaver Dam Analogs (BDAs) or Rock Detention Structures (RDAs) established in arid and incised streambeds. Those structures, which include those made of rocks and recycled Christmas trees at the WBDC, contribute to a “Processed-Based Restoration” (PBR) strategy for reconnecting and expanding floodplain environments, raising water tables, improving water quality and retention, and encouraging hardier and more diverse habitat development.

That’s a lot to base on a beaver, but Thetford and Masters have a sizeable and growing roster of scientists and studies that support the strategies.

Natural Infrastructure in Dryland Streams (NIDS)

Utah State University Professor Dr. Stephen Bennett, alongside fellow USU professors Dr. Nick Bouwes and Dr. Joe Wheaton, have spent decades in their personal careers and their ventures as owners of Anabranch Solutions focused on the development, testing and implementation of low-cost, low-tech, sustainable strategies for stream restoration.

During his presentation at the March conference on BDAs, Bennett noted that many of the streams and floodplain systems across the US have been impaired and become incised – when water in a floodplain rushes through a narrow and deepening channel instead of spreading out over a more even surface. This can lead to the erosion of sediment and nutrient-rich soil, lower the water table and prevent water from being retained in vegetation or soil.

However, Bennett noted that water flow in a riparian system can be reconnected, slowed down and extended by widening the stream bed and using NIDS such as BDAs to adjust the water’s direction and flow rate.

As noted by Bennett and US Geological Survey scientists such as Dr. Laura Norman, whose presentation based on her recent paper focused on NIDS was shown during the April field day, these structures can be effectively made with materials like wood, rock and mud to help achieve an expansive list of benefits, including:

• Increased water availability;
• Increasing water cycle and evapotranspiration productivity;
• Sediment storage, formation and productivity;
• Carbon sequestration and storage;
• Flood management and water quality protection;
• Increased vegetation viability;
• Decreased temperatures and climate variability; and
• Benefits to cattle grazing and other agriculture.

Thetford mentioned that those benefits and others are sorely needed around arid and deteriorated streambeds such as those in the Texas Panhandle and High Plains region. After decades of damage done by various development, industrial and agricultural practices, Thetford and others noted that “oasis-ification” to reverse the desertification the region has undergone could take years.

As Bennett said during the March conference: “Fixing things is a lot harder than conserving, and we have a lot of fixing to do.”

However, despite the daunting task ahead, speakers like Bennett and Norman also noted that the need for maintenance for these streambeds is likely to lessen as time goes on as it rejuvenates into a self-sustaining ecosystem through the PBR practices. In the future, the area could also have a substantial beaver population to help with any heavy lifting.

At the WBDC, Thetford, Masters and their cohort have already taken the first steps to adapt PBR practices and NIDS to the unique (and uniquely parched) High Plains.

Restoring the West Amarillo Creek

In February 2024, the WBDC and Ogallala Life joined to begin using PBR practices and NIDS to restore West Amarillo Creek, which ran dry in the 1970s after being fed for decades by assorted stream systems in the area and the runoff water from the Amarillo Helium Plant.

In seeking to adapt PBR strategies to the West Amarillo Creek area, Thetford and Masters noted that the goal will be to restore the riparian system so that the 22-acre stream area can make the best use possible of its 8,000-acre drainage basin for the benefit of the above-ground environment and to utilize its unique geological opportunity for aquifer recharge.

To do this, the project gathered materials such as leftover Christmas trees, rocks, and other spare foliage in the area to construct multiple types of NIDS described by Norman, including:

• BDAs made of wood and foliage weighed down to keep steady against floodwater;
• “Brush” check dams made of foliage and occasional loose rocks; and
• Leaky weirs made using rock and mud situated perpendicularly in water channels.

Areas around the WBDC had also been terraced by the time of the April field day on the downward slope away from the area’s windmill and fitted with other NIDS structures.

Altogether, Thetford and Masters noted that there were more than 80 Christmas tree dams, one rock dam and other NIDS structures in progress throughout the West Amarillo Creek streambed system. The Ogallala Life website currently features a full map of the structures and regular updates on the project’s progress.

Only a few months into the project, organizers like Thetford and Masters were already noting gains in the West Amarillo Creek area. Swaths of greenery already bracketed smaller trickles of water coming from the windmill and through the terraced downslope, stacked foliage and new vegetation were already keeping areas along the creekbed cooler and with more thoroughly saturated soil, and in a particular win for Thetford – the creek was spotted with young cottonwood and other native trees.

The young trees were a highlight for Thetford, a longtime lover of cottonwood trees and avid supporter of native tree repopulation. Most of the trees around West Amarillo Creek, as Thetford noted, are anywhere from 40 to 50-plus years old. An area with no “little” trees such as that holds clear signs of environmental degradation and a dire need for change; the sprouts shooting up along the creekbed, then, serve both as a hopeful sign for the future and a motivator for further action.

However, years of severe drought can devastate trees in riparian areas as well as other vegetation, and make it more difficult to recover. As prolonged extreme drought conditions and other disasters like wildfires or tremendous flooding destroy vegetation and soil, less is left behind – in worse conditions – to kickstart the recovery process.

But the real kicker for environmental recovery and sturdiness, noted Thetford, will be a lack of rain and an increase in flooding. While the High Plains region currently gets multiple “big” rains per year – Thetford used around nine, two-inch rains as an example – incremental climate changes at the current rate are likely to change that to around three, five-inch rains per year in a few decades.

As bad as events like hurricanes, tornados and fires can get, Thetford noted, “they come and they go.” Meanwhile, rain patterns shifting due to the climate will mean a new normal in which areas like West Amarillo Creek will only have a matter of hours to capture and store its yearly amount of water – both for itself, for the aquifer below it, and for the community surrounding it.

That’s all the more reason for those who live in the region to be aware of the state of its water and environment and to pay attention to restorative efforts like those going on at the WBDC. Riparian areas around the High Plains region will need to be able to consistently survive significant flood events as well as prolonged drought as time goes on, and will need both help from ecological projects and its own wildlife to do it.

With time, attention and proper planning, NIDS experts like Bennett and Norman noted that successfully rejuvenated areas will strengthen as the system literally grows in vegetation and sediment, becoming more self-sustaining through its own habitat, physics, and wildlife – like, hopefully, beavers. In the future, those systems will need less help to recover from drought and disasters and maintain their benefits for the extended region.

That kind of habitat hardiness will likely take decades to achieve for West Amarillo Creek, amid ongoing climate and development challenges upstream, downstream and outward. However, with community engagement and consistent effort, those such as Masters noted that that end goal is attainable. With enough work and luck, he mused during the April field day that more notable beaver populations could be seen around West Amarillo Creek and water could be more consistently flowing within a lifetime in a way that can last for future generations.

To that end, as a rotund mascot, an ecological goalpost, a habitat neighbor and community member, a tutor among many, and otherwise – those working to improve and protect water on the High Plains continue to consider the beaver.

For the latest Amarillo news and regional updates, check with MyHighPlains.com and tune in to KAMR Local 4 News at 5:00, 6:00, and 10:00 p.m. and Fox 14 News at 9:00 p.m. CST.