City Creek
Sageland Collaborative Design, permitting, implementation & monitoring
Utah Division of Wildlife Resources Funding & implementation
Project Goals and Objectives
The goal of this project is to increase resilience of water resources and wildlife habitat to wildfire and drought that beaver provided historically. City Creek is critically important for wildlife and human water consumption. Although the project area in City Creek is currently in relatively good condition, the creek has begun to cut downward since beavers stopped inhabiting the canyon in recent decades. Without purposeful structural additions, the stream would likely continue to down-cut and become disconnected from adjacent floodplain vegetation. Funding for this project came from Utah’s Watershed Restoration Initiative.
Structure Construction Elements
We built beaver dam analogs (BDAs) using untreated wood posts (2-4" diameter) pounded into the streambed at the height of the ordinary high water mark and then filled in by volunteers using on-site materials including sustainably harvested shrub branches, mud, rocks, and clumps of sod.
Project Photos
Cover Photo
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