Beaver Dam Analog

Amongst the most precious of all resources to Idaho's. Farmers and ranchers is water. We've all noticed over the last few years increasing stretches of drought, which are no good for anyone. What if we could store more water that comes in the form of snow in the winter? Southeast Idaho's Jason Fellows tells his story of building over 2000ft of Beaver Dam analogs in hopes to help sustain the terrain and keep water on the mountains longer. BDA is a beaver dam analog. It's a man made Beaver Dam and it’s posts that are pounded in the creek bed. And then they actually have trees or limbs that are weaved in between and dirt piled up. So it actually ponds up water. And the difference between a beaver dam and a manmade beaver dam, which is a beaver dam analog is a beaver, does a damn good job in our area here in the west, in southern Idaho, our water storage is actually on top of the mountains in the snow. So when we have it, get really warm really quick. We lose water really rapidly. So we lose a lot of soil and erosion as it runs down the canyons pretty quick. By implementing a BDA higher in the creek bed, it actually slows that water flow down. It dissipates into the soil. So that creek bed is more sustainable throughout later in the year. The big thing about a BDA is, is that you're hopefully attracting a beaver to come in someday. A beaver is a walking hot dog unless it has a pool of water to live in. We put about 2000ft of bdas in. Brilliant imitating nature.