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Mountain Campus students team up with Trout Unlimited for stream restoration
Over the past two weeks, Mountain Campus students in Conservation Biology and Environmental History and Literature, Leadership and the Outdoors have teamed up with Trout Unlimited to build beaver dam analogs (BDAs) in the Jones Brook, which runs through the Mountain Campus property in Peru.
Beaver dam analogs are hand-made, human-built structures that mimic the form and function of natural beaver dams.
Students in Literature, Leadership and the Outdoors cut more than ninety wooden posts from the property for the project. Students in both classes, with help from Phil McGovern of Trout Unlimited, then installed the posts in the brook and packed the dams with locally cut brush, branches, logs, and mud.
Meanwhile, students in Conservation Biology and Environmental History, a junior/senior-level course, studied watershed ecology and how the dams will help restore health to the Jones Brook and surrounding streams and rivers.
The dams slow water down, spread it across the landscape, and reconnect streams to their floodplains. That can reduce erosion, stabilize damaged streambeds and banks, trap sediment, and create more complex habitat for fish, amphibians, insects, and other wildlife. With Vermont seeing more intense rain events as the climate changes, projects like this can also help the landscape hold onto water longer and slow its movement downstream, which may lessen flooding in the watersheds and towns below Mountain Campus.
For some students, the project had special meaning. Last year’s cohort watched drought dry up the Jones Brook into small, disconnected pools. Several of those students joined this year’s build team and saw the BDAs’ impact firsthand.
“Since installation, water levels have already doubled in some areas and large pools have formed,” said teacher Rebecca Allen.
Students have noticed the change, too. “I can’t believe how much the water has risen since we installed the dams!” one Mountain Campus student exclaimed.
The hope is that the restored landscape will also draw more beaver activity and continue to rebuild wetlands in the upper Jones Brook area.
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