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Earlier this year we introduced you to Glassie, our riparian restoration project in Scotland. In this video, we're constructing our fake beavers to really kickstart regeneration of this river.
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MOSSY EARTH MEMBERSHIP
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The rewilding membership that restores nature across a wide range of ecosystems.
🌲 Support a diversity of ecosystems
🐺 Rewild habitats to bring back biodiversity
🦫 Fund neglected species & ecosystems
Learn more and become a member here: https://mossy.earth
💪 OUR PARTNERS IN THIS VIDEO
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River Revivers: https://riverrevivers.co.uk/
Glassie: https://www.thebunkhouse.co.uk/
⏱️TIMESTAMPS⏱️
0:00 Intro
2:00 Project recap
3:21 River fly survey
5:36 Building the dams
11:23 Real beaver dams
🔎 ABOUT THIS PROJECT
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Beavers have rightly claimed a lot of accolades in the recent rewilding movement for their central role in restoring riparian areas. The dams they engineer create habitats, filter water and help mitigate flood damage and droughts. For degraded riparian areas devoid of trees and beavers, artificial structures called Beaver Dam Analogues (BDAs) are being used to mimic the effects of beaver dams. This is the case for our latest project in Scotland at Glassie Farm, a member of the Northwoods Rewilding Network (NRN). Habitat degradation, pollution and rising water temperatures are threatening a host of important native species. In partnership with River Revivers, we’re building BDAs and planting native trees and scrub to create habitat, help improve water quality, stabilise water temperature and mitigate flood damage.
Read all about this work here:
https://www.mossy.earth/projects/riparian-restoration-glassie-farm
Nice. Good luck.
In Australia, we call them “leaky weirs” (check dams too) as beavers don’t exist and they were popularised by Natural Sequence Farming and Peter Andrews with great effect. Don’t let the name fool you, they aren’t that leaky and are built similarly to this vid.
I don’t know if I like the term beaver dam as it’s a bit exclusionary but if it works for clicks and techniques for the northern hemisphere, that’s cool.
I’ve just included some old videos, NSF has been around for a long time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbaSL94NBcw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwnT8IrWNYQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fayywpnFBAA
And the dude himself explaining why more recently:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUDxycp7ayk
Playlist with more (80 videos) if anyone interested:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE-d88mKVNvCLWK0_m46vHoQGXfT5T-S4
Can you help me pick up what you’re putting down here?
Thank you both for sharing these videos, really cool stuff, makes me think about this gem from almost ten years ago now.
Not every country has beavers. Weir is already the word used in English to define what is happening here.
Ahh yes, the original swale. Probably caused more small scale earthworks than anything?
Very fair! I had friends working in Australia for some time but never visited, my loss. It really sounded interesting and different.
Ya, possibly. I would think that earlier people, as observant as they were, were building swales long ago in Persia or North Africa. Or SW USA. Or Australia.
Not that I’m an expert or anything, but I don’t know if Aus’ First Nations harnessed water for agriculture like that. What they did do was make amazing fish traps and eel farms. The fact they could place rocks in a river for trapping purposes and have them not wash away, ever, blows my mind.
A big fallen Euc is all the swale you need. They are still visible in rivers and gullies, even though the forest is long gone around them.