Creating Miracles in the Desert: Restoring Dixie Creek
2021 ж. 26 Қаз.
666 902 Рет қаралды
Dixie Creek is a small stream near Elko, Nevada. Changes in livestock grazing practices resulted in the plants that naturally grow along streams to come back which eventually attracted beaver. The beaver built dams which captured and slowed stream flows, ultimately creating a landscape full of water and wildlife even during recent periods of severe drought. Interviews with stakeholders show how a recovered stream can benefit a wide range of interests and offer hope for a better future. The story of Dixie Creek’s recovery was produced by Reno, Nevada-based production company, Little Wild, and co-funded by the IWJV/BLM and NRCS/WLFW. www.partnersinthesage.com/blo...
Copyright: MB01GNDP5MQD4FY
The beaver is a saviour in times of drought and times of flood, amazing creatures that need more recognition from the general public for doing infinitely more good than bad.
Great. Take ours. Here in downtown Columbus Ohio we have those little brown b@st@rds raising he11 and Wildlife boys out here all the time catching and releasing... it ain't happy time for anyone!
Beavers are a lot like man. They will destroy entire ecosystems for their own benefit.
@@vintagethrifter2114 They create new ones, though. Wetlands are threatened and lacking damn near everywhere humans have set foot!
@@vintagethrifter2114 their benefit is the ecosystem’s benefit, that’s the difference between them and us.
@@kirani111 Beavers aren't flooding forests, mountain meadows and prairies for the ecosystems "benefit". They are doing it for their own benefit. Prairie dogs don't care who flooded their town. They just know that their colony has just become extinct. It's like the great Pacific garbage patch. Did you know that it is its own ecosystem, complete with plants, marine and bird life? We altered the original ecosystem and created a new one. It is the same thing beavers do but you want to give them a pass and blame humans for doing the exact same thing.
This is miraculous. Don’t think that this is a story about only a mile or two of stream. Carol has done this with hundreds of miles of stream in Nevada!
now if only these folks could do something about their culture of white supremacy
A few more trees growing in the desert and climate change, won’t be a problem anymore in fact, more biodiversity and less heat
Nothing miraculous about it! It called getting the hell out of the way! Simple don’t you think?
@@jamessparkman6604so you think you can change the earths temperature? Less heat? So then they’ll be complaints about worse winters?
Congratulations to the farmers, land managers and hunters for recreating and preserving that ecosystem. Keep up the great success! Greetings from Germany
@@SimSim-zf9if it's easy to have 20 20 vision in hindsight. I wonder sometimes how people hundreds of years from now will view the actions of people who live now. 🤔
Land managers, farmers and mostly hunters are people who contributes to ecosystem problems, farmers overuse the water and and these hunters endlessly killing wild animals just for recreation.
@@chrismckell5353 20:20 hindsight, for god's sake its the 21st century not the 1900's. These things were known over 50 years ago and we still continue to rape the land. These types of success stories are a drop in ocean. Also what do the hunters have to do with anything? They are only looking for a good supply of prey to rebound.
Ditto from the UK!
Esp the farmers. Either there was a massive pushback from them when the govt came in to “fix the problem”, or the problem they caused was so bad they didn’t care what anyone did to the stream. It’s sad they took and took from the land until it’s resources were gone instead of managing it as a resource all along.
Carol you deserve a medal. Not only for identifying what was causing the problem but then presenting your findings and getting the buy in from the people who, maybe inadvertently, contributed to the problem. Jon, you and you fellow ranchers are certainly a great bunch of people. Having the foresight to understand what Carol had identified and then picking it up and running with it. All in all a damn fine bunch of people making the land a much better and more sustainable. I hope lots of people use this as tale of how successful the outcome can be if people work together on a project. it may have taken a long time but I'm sure everyone felt the benefits from quite early on. Well done everyone involved, oh and a big shout out to Mr Beaver and his family for contributing also.👍
Things like this is why I want to take over my dads ranch, so I can focus on putting in beaver dam analogs and pushing wholistic management further than my dad did when he got the ball rolling
in Nevada? It is amazing how fast riparian veg can come back
Beaver dam analogs are cool 😎 we can learn so much following nature’s example . . .
That sounds like a really worthwhile goal. Learn as much as you can now whilst working alongside him and one day when the time is right and he's ready to retire you'll be ready to take over the ranch and continue his work.
Holistic
This is fabulous! I grew up during a time in the Great Basin where most of the drainages looked like the 1989 video and photos of Dixie Creek. I’m so happy to hear and watch this multi-interest group come together to restore something so precious in this dry country. Bless you all!
How about the revitalize the human habitat for once.
It’s amazing how everything is dried up for miles expect the immediate basin around the creek reminds me of the same effect the Nile river does In the Sahara
You can start to imagine what would happen if you start to reverse the damage humans have done to all of these creeks, rivers, etc. You can create green spots and permanent water throughout dry areas, it cools, changes weather, creates more rain, and makes everything else more fertile... which again starts another cycle of life and growth.
Not being a grand ma nazi but watch auto correct. It's a pain cos it can replace a word with a completely different word (if you accidentally press a wrong key). In your case you ment "except" but autocorrect made it "expect", it seems.
@@Justwantahover Yeah alright "Grandma Errors" 😂
Or the Colorado River in Mexico?
And...man has managed to ruin the natural cycle of the Nile by building the Aswan Dam. Nature has been perfecting herself for millenia until humans came along, thought they knew better and destroyed the environment. .
A watershed manager once told me his job was capturing and safely releasing water. Dixie Creek is an excellent example.
It's too easy. Just bring Beaver and keep everyone from shooting them. The Beavers will do the work.
@@russellringland1399 nobody shoots Beaver. They won't come back until the habitat can support them. Beaver haven't been Hunted hard for 100 years. There are so many beavers in New England now, we don't know what to do with them all. It is just a matter of giving them space to live
The permaculture ethos for watershed management is "slow it, soak it, spread it" and maximize each drop's participation in life-rich interactions between the point where it first enters your land and the point where it finally leaves your land.
@@zenolachance1181 We need more in the PNW, i have only seen a few in the wild.
@@NDwhITeBoYZ I'm sure New Hampshire would love to give you some
The permaculture ethos for watershed management is "slow it, soak it, spread it" and maximize each drop's participation in life-rich interactions between the point where it first enters your land and the point where it finally leaves your land.
Beavers are second only to man in modifying their environment to suit their needs. They really are incredible creatures who get little recognition.
An argument could be made that man is second to Beaver in several ways.
@@duotronic6451 man up to medieval times shaped the environment in ways that also increased biodiversity, similar to beavers. they created small open areas in the woods, etc. The problem is intensive agriculture and ranching which is still fairly recent history.
@@Maurazio "We" moved from being social (cooperation) to cultural (competition). "We" didn't get kicked out of Eden, we defiled it. The whole Earth was an "Eden" and could be again. Let us work to reconcile the needs and works of humankind with those of the Earth and all of its life.
As a Christian we humans after the fall into sin brought selfishness and lack of love of creation to humanity. We were meant to be the perfect caretakers for the planet as God's creation but after the fall we lost the ability to be perfect caretakers of the planet due to greed and selfishness.
Haha, beavers are easily no. 1. Seeing as they are not the ones who created the destruction in the first place.
Carol out here literally changing the world what a trooper
G'day I'm in Australia and we have been dong a similar thing here with great results.Looks good keep up the good work and well done.
G'day Dave.........Exciting isn't it!!!
Make a video about it !
I remember & enjoyed the Australian Story of bringing back the creeks & sadly a millionaire philanthropist who devoted a lot for the cause dies young of cancer & touchingly wanted to be burried in a hand made basket like coffin. My respect
@@vossejongk kzhead.info/sun/naxmqpGbn4Z6qYE/bejne.html
@@vossejongk kzhead.info/sun/naxmqpGbn4Z6qYE/bejne.html if U can't open this, go to Australian story, Land regeneration 2017
I ran inmate fire crew for utah state 97 and 98. We fenced off alot of riparian zones for BMP to achieve these same results
good job eh
We need a lot more of this. Great to see. Nature just needs a little support, then it makes a huge difference. Beavers are awesome, and they are just one of thousands or millions of creatures that exist to maintain a diverse and healthy ecosystem.
You're right about nature needing human support to thrive but most of the time its after the human themselves has degraded the land, ironic right? Nature was long here before us and actually were doing better without us! Although humans can have a pretty good role to play among other species in this planet instead of battling the thing that gave us life...
@@erfan4244 I think a lot of the ancient cultures have a better understanding of living with the land. We are a part of it yet we are encouraged to see ourselves as apart from it. I don't think this view benefits the world including most of us.
Fantastic. I'm an Aussie who has lived in arid areas and seen the effects of over grazing and poor land management. The simple strategy of slowing down the water flow (I wish we had beavers) and reducing the time stock feeds on the vegetation is so conducive to the health of our waterways and native ecosystems. Smaller paddocks and faster rotation of stock so that they don't over eat/stress the areas has shown to be both better for the land and better for profits. No matter how much we all wish we could make everything a National Park or protected land, the reality is most of it will be owned and operated as a business. Farmers and graziers have to make money to look after their families and survive just like the rest of us. Initiatives like this, tick all the boxes. Just because our forefathers did things in a certain way, it doesn't disrespect them to learn and adopt better methods when it ultimately benefits everyone. People, animals. plants and the water table. Again fantastic. It makes me feel good to see people making a real difference and caring for the land. Cheers from Australia.
If you import beavers, you need to import predators too, or they will make a mess like they are in South America. On a positive note, predators that eat beavers would also eat rabbits. ❤
that is blm land those farmers do not own the land we all do they graze dirt cheap and many destroy the rivers with there cows if they want to be on the land they need to do what these farmers did.
My dad grew up on a ranch exactly in this area. He would have loved to see this.
I used to fish for trout in Buffalo Spring I think, near Orovada, NV. You could step across it in most places but it had plenty of trout. Good to see people looking out for these places.
Beavers in the desert.... Unbelieveable.
Beavers used to be all over North America. Happy seeing them making a come back 🦫
@@everythingisfine9988 yes everywhere. all the way down to Mexico
Beaver has been extinct in the UK since the mid-1500's. They've been reintroduced in several places since 2009. They're thriving. Everybody keep up the good work.
I've heard euro beavers were bred with american ones to bolster their gene pool.
With the waters rising all countries that have desserts or suffer heavy draughts need to adopt this idea. Well done Nevada! ❤
Greetings from the Netherlands. Phenomenal. Thank goodness there are folks like yourselves that care about environmental health.
Up north here in Canada we have some pretty flat areas where beaver will flood huge areas, including homes, but in a valley, or rivers like that, they usually just make ponds like you have there, and then the water flows out of it. They don’t stop the river like people think, unless there’s no more input. People always used to break down the dams thinking they stop the water flow.p, but that’s impossible. If the flow stops, it’s because there is no water coming in, and consider yourself lucky the beaver made a reservoir
All of us Canadians appreciate all the good work our national spirit animal does around the world.
When there is water and rolling foothills like that it also brings back and hold populations of Sage grouse, Hungarian and Chukar partridge, not mention larger mammals.
Love to see ranchers, locals, BLM, and others working TOGETHER. Way to go! Everybody benefits!
Wish there were more things like this on youtube win win instead of argue argue
It’s so nice to see the hard work and perseverance of people trying to improve the world bear fruit. Well done! This is beautiful!
This is Incredible. Every single American should watch this and every single American should do their part to restore the country's natural beauty
that is what i learned from a old couple that were /lived to be in their early 100s, if you have beavers on your land you will always have water even in drought times,, so i took their advice and never trapped more then 2 beaver out of a colony unless they were causing damage to roads or field crops ,i was a damage control trapper at one time when i was younger and healthy,, so yup beaver are oth good and bad,, in this case they are really really good
Beautiful work.. our public lands are such a special thing ❤️
This story makes my heart sing! Thank you, Carol, and all the other unsung heroes who dedicate their lives to returning our land to the way Nature intended it to be. THANK YOU!! ❤❤❤
We need to bring the beavers back everywhere if possible.
I have land 20 minutes from Dixie Creek great to see how good it looks.
It is a very impressive sight to see the rejuvenation of the creek. It is also a very well-made video. Good luck with enlarging the project. By the way, beavers are just coming back into the UK in a few places. You can check out the progress of "re-wilding" in the UK - and how the reintroduction of beavers is helping the process - at various places on KZhead.
Giant Wet Mice are an ecologically important species.
So cool to hear about the work in the UK! Thanks!
I grew up in Ely around Cave lake Cummings lake illipah lake in the Ruby marshes. So much outdoor fun I never even realized I was in a desert, this is a good story !
What a fantastic story and such a remarkable lady!
What a great example of conservation work.well done people, from NZ 🇳🇿
It’s a great positive story, a theme I love. There are Dixie creeks all over the world right now that need help
It is nice seeing positive stories that are at least tangentially related to climate change. I wish this video was bigger but I thank you for making it and thank the KZhead algorithm for recommending it to me!
Hear hear
Wow ! Imagine if we had more state employees like this in general. Across the nation
So, aside from the land managers and the cooperative people in the area the second heroes in these story are The Beavers 😁
So Great to see what Miracles can happen when People understand that Beavers are So Critical to our Healthy Streams and Creeks especially in Desert type landscapes! Thanks for the Video!
Man, the effect that one small change can make. Inspiring.
This needs to happen around the world! Kudos to all who helped make this happen.
Many places around the world have been doing this for hundreds if not thousands of years. It's modern, industrial farming that has tried to take shortcuts to save money. I live on a cattle farm in Scotland, our cows are regularly moved around, several times a year, and we have more water than we will ever need. It's not just about the water, it's feeding the soil and letting it recover. Too many people over the years have said "over grazing is the problem", but what they mean is land management is the problem. The waste from cattle etc is vital to the whole system.
@@Argrouk You only move your cattle around several times a year? Regenerative ranchers that I know of in the US move them every day!
@@wendyscott8425 I understand how that may sound, but let me make two things clear that might explain things. Firstly, the land is sound, it is not healing after years of abuse. It is well hydrated with regular rain, bordered by hedgerows and trees in a biodiverse landscape, and free from chemical "assistance", and has been for generations. This is not regenerative, this is stopping it going bad in the first place. Cattle do not graze anywhere near watercourses. Secondly, our herds are smaller and pastures are larger (on a per cow basis) than most US commercial ranches. Cattle do not march in a line like a cartoon fever dream lawn mower stripping the land bare, but are free to roam and frolick in a space that they do not come close to clearing before they are moved.
@Argrouk Cool, sounds like heaven!
"Welcome to our drought," as she wades knee-deep. Rockin'
Intermountain West Joint Venture 🌱 thank you for sharing this story of land rehabilitation! Beavers build healthy habitats 💕 wonderful scientists
When we work together, great things happen. Awesome!!
Amazing! Kudos to the ranchers for following science. Really beautiful.
This is being done in many parts of the world. So exciting and encouraging 😁
I watch the daily news and my heart despairs, seeing so little light shed on what truly threatens our future… the decimation of the miraculous balance of Nature. I find this video and my heart rejoices. Like Dixie Creek, it has been replenished and renewed. Just knowing there are others out there who understand and care, who are planting seeds of wisdom and compassion, replenishes my resolve and renews my strength to never give up. Thank you so very much!!!
Learn and teach Permaculture. It has answers.
Beaver. Man's best friend.
Waw ! You guys are showing a way of life i never knew existed. These actions are not being shown on tv or they might show one project. Lately i realize there's so many groups spread all over the world, often connected thru the internet... I want to be a part of that. I live in Belgium, we don't have these dry places but i sure like to join in the nearest dry region which is Spain. Than you for being an inspiration ❤
The feel better video of the day. Congrats from France.
hey youtube can you recommend way more vids like this i really really love seeing nature heal herself 🥰
I've become more and more interested in these stream and wetlands restoration efforts, how they can be accomplished with incredibly low-tech and on an extremely small scale, and how they heal the whole environment around them.
They're right to be proud of it! Amazing job
when every living cell holds an ocean within water wants to flow slow
One smart woman and many brilliant beavers.
Carol, you're a rock star! What a great career you had at BLM.
This is so wonderful! We heard about this recently and was so happy to come across this video. What an amazing story of how things can recover with the right knowledge to manage land correctly. Thank you so much for all that you've done to make this happen! Bravo!
Beautiful! Not too far from us. I’d love to see more streams restored in the arid west. I drive semi in the region for a living, and pass so many former stream beds that look like Dixie at the start of this restoration project…barren, dry, ghosts of themselves. Would absolutely love if every canyon and valley looked like Dixie does today! Great work everybody!
I'm especially impressed that the ranchers haven't been negatively affected. That's the real thing here. That actual useful business can thrive along with everything else.
Ranchers need the beaver dams to raise the water table in surrounding land. Ranches aren't the only useful thing either... Fish thrive in beaver ponds as well as hundreds of other species in the food chain. Removing the beavers ruined the area, and that was a decision by human hunters and ranchers. Restoring habitat for beavers improves the land around streams immensely.
This woman's beaver singlehandedly saved Nevada.
This is so wonderful to witness. I wish they would do this where I live in Utah. There seems to be zero focus on rejuvenation of the land. Cows everywhere all the time is not land management.
This is an amazing and inspiring story! I'm sure it will serve as an example of how multiple use management, when done correctly, can benefit all parties. Thank you, Carol, for having the foresight to document conditions 32 years ago and sticking with the goal! Do you remember your week at the Tozitna River fish camp with my crew and me ;)
Hi Jason! So cool to hear from you. Do I remember Tozi? That was the best experience of my life! I have long wondered how the salmon runs are doing here. News about salmon everywhere seems pretty grim. Are you still in Alaska?
I can't agree more! And I too remember our week at the Tozi Fish Camp. Unforgettable.
amazing stuff. We have sort of the same problem in Scotland with too much grazing by an inflated deer population. Unfortunately the natural predators have been extinct for many hundreds of years
In the U S we have an author and restorative farmer by the name of Joel Salatin. He has a saying about such things. "If you don't have pigs, you'll have to do the pigs job." Maybe that applies to wolves also.
In Michigan we have 245,432 deer-vehicle crashes with about 10 fatalities. Too bad the wolves are gone.
Are the authorities over there looking for a solution? Or they are still trying figure what to do with the excessive amount of deers?
@@Drskopf Not very much. Decades ago the deer herd was much smaller due to over-hunting and reduced habitat. Changes in the economy, land management and a new generation of citizens with a reduced interest in hunting has driven the increase of the herd.
Funny, we have wolves here in Oregon and no deer.
when i see examples of the earth bouncing back in our absence, i think about how beautiful our world must have been before we became sick with greed. can you imagine if we all vanished for 30 years and came back? can you imagine how much the world would heal?
A powerful restoration. Hope this spreads to the other basins. So beautiful. Congratulations Carol Evans!
This is such an awesome story. So inspiring that it isn’t too late for us to change the world. Thank you for sharing.
Wonderful, Inspire ring, Thank you for your keen stewardess around the area. You have all made a different to our world.
it is nice to know there are ranchers out there that are genuinely interested in working with nature and not being so hyper focused on just cattle and that water in the desert is a good thing. I am southwestern New Mexico and this is definitely not the case.
Recharging the water table is a huge benefit. The ranchers probably appreciate that.
This video is beyond awesome. Peter Andrews in Australia is doing ‘natural sequence farming’ with some similar results … but unfortunately we don’t have beavers and our koalas just aren’t that helpful in building dams.
It's good to see some people repairing the land instead of damaging.
I love stories like this. We can do so much better.
Education and hard work. Makes miracle.
Or maybe just stop to eat cows and drink milk so grazing won’t be a problem for these lands.
@@palhod Un managed grazing is the problem. Permaculture teaches balance. Grazing is part of nutrient recycling. Think systems.
This is such an awesome story of rebirth! I applaud everyone's efforts over the years to bring this area back to vitality! NGL, i shed a few tears after watching this. Gives me hope for us humans to be able to work together for a common goal, regardless of differing backgrounds.
I love success stories like this! Folks need to know what's possible!
Great video! Fantastic team work. Beautiful results. Thanks for all your work, every one of you. Sincerely, Pete
This is fantastic. Thank you for sharing. I spent my formative years in Wyoming, where you can see this same damage from grazing everywhere you go. Little effort has be put forward to restore the streams and creeks from grazing damage. I could name several streams there that need some of this management.
Teach them Permaculture.
Wish we could bring back the bison and the beaver in a big way across the west.
Contact someone at your local BLM and initiate a project..meet with ranchers and show them this video..go for it!
I was just out on Lake Mead last month and it is at the lowest point in decades. Nevada is crazy dry; so it is great to see incremental change like this.
I love hearing farmers acknowledge they didn’t know better at the time but I’d love for them to shout out the early scientists, advocates and activists who’ve been trying to explain it since the 70s 👏
I would love to see this happen all across Nevada (I live in the Reno area) because this state needs the water. It would be great to see some more green than just along the Truckee River. New swimming holes, new fishing spots...I'm all for that, just so long as our native animal species don't lose their habitats (i.e. Leopard lizard, Zebra tail lizard - our indigenous reptiles...and insects and mammals and our avians too, of course, but I have a real big soft spot for our resident reptile inhabitants).
Stop landscaping, for one thing. It's a matter of whether we insist upon continuing to change the world to suit our demands instead of fulfilling the needs (sans demands) of all, that we can save our children. I'll be leaving soon, and so will everybody in good time . . .
In Australia we don't have beaver but to revive creeks we use bolders to slow the water down and create pools of water that soak in and revive to surrounding landscape. This will save the environment better than supposed green energy like solar panels.
Beavers really will travel anywhere!
I rarely see quail near grazing, Excellent work
Properly timed grazing and working with natural systems is the most productive way to retain water, improve nature, and raise meat animals simultaneously. Bravo.
Wonderful work, great video, thanks for showing us an example!
I love it you said every stream has their own story.
Tell that farmer to dig swales and bunds on his arid slopes! Wonderful work you all well done!
This is amazing, you guys are doing extremely important work there. This reminds me kind of of Allan Savory's method of holistic planned grazing. I think it's really food for thought that the massive floodplains, that Luke Barrett mentions at 2:30, were able to exist while millions of bison roamed the land, or maybe even BECAUSE the occasional grazing of the gigantic nomadic herds of bison passing through was doing an important ecological service to maintain the grasslands, according to Allan Savory. I truly believe that adapting our grazing methods, especially in areas vulnerable to desertification, could be the key to saving the planet, because that has the potential to turn our animal herds from a burden on the landscape to a huge benefit for the environment.
We are killing aquifers, like the Great Central Valley in California (30+ feet of subsidence can never be recovered) and the Ogallala Aquifer in the Great Plains where the bison were able to rotate the pasture and weren't hunted to extinction. The Great Basin has always been dryer, and has been more browser than grazer habitat, with uncounted populations of elk, pronghorn, deer, and plenty of healthy food for all--until we replaced a subsistence economy with a cash economy. That's not going to change, but if we have sense enough to face facts instead of demanding our lottery fantasies, we can all live well better together than apart.
California needs this type of management. We wouldn't have forest fires if they managed the WHOLE ecosystems. This work that was done at Dexie Creek is amazing! Can't wait to see what it will look like in 30 years.
Forest fires are actually natural and important.
@@willmin439 yes the are very important, but that doesn't mean you don't manage fires to control the burning. Look at Florida there are fires every summer, but you don't see whole towns being burned down.
Thanks to all the tireless workers who work for the betterment of all. 🙏🏽🙏❤️
Great way to deal with the Tragedy of The Commons paradox. Nice to see that we can work things out when we work together.
What a beautiful video! Gives me hope to see folks with different interests all working together and making something wonderful happen.
Amazing what happens when we learn to live in sync with mother earth instead of always just taking from her.
Oh my God so beautiful thank for teaching us to restore the land ♥️😘💯💋❤️♥️😘💯💋❤️♥️😘💯💋❤️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️
That’s so fantastic to see great work to everyone involved ❤
What an inspiring and amazing story.
great story ,i really appreciated the end of the video statement as nevada gets drier dixie creek gets wetter..same story in yellowstone...amazing how nature works...