Beavers in Las Vegas? A secret garden in Sin City spotlights river restoration success

The Park’s 210-acre Nature Preserve houses miles of pathways for hiking, biking, and birdwatching. On any given day you might come across one or more of the over 300 species of birds and 70 species of mammals that live here, including coyotes, bobcats, and yes, even beavers. 

Suffice it to say, this is not your average Las Vegas tourist attraction.

“This is an important place for habitat as well as a place that people can come, recreate, and experience nature, and that is one of the special parts about the park,” said Ben Jurand, environmental specialist at Clark County Wetlands Park. “It’s a unique feature in the Las Vegas valley where you can forget you’re in Las Vegas.” 

Much of what makes this place so special comes from the diligent 35-year effort to restore this marshy habitat back to a remnant of what the valley used to embody. It was this lush wetland that, 200 years ago, inspired a Spanish explorer to name the area “Las Vegas” —  “The Meadows.”

Clark County Wetlands Park, which has been in operation since 1991, contains 2,900 acres and is fed by rainwater run-off and channelized waters moving through the Las Vegas Wash and into Lake Mead. For experts involved in riverscape restoration, the wetlands’ geography represents what could be for other riparian — or water-adjacent — habitats of the greater Colorado River Watershed in Southern Nevada. 

“We have extremely rare types of native habitats out here showing the riparian systems that were native to the Las Vegas valley’s original stream systems that have since dried up,” said Jurand. “Here, we are creating continuous habitat as a response to wetland habitat that was destroyed in the valley as a result of construction or development.” 

Leave it to the beavers

Of all the wildlife in the park, one of the most unexpected is the beavers.

Although beavers are generally considered to be found in wooded areas, there are numerous accounts of them found within the arid waterways throughout southern Nevada. They often make their way into lush riparian habitats where they can build beaver dens and dams to create protection and store vital food sources. 

In the Wetlands Park, miles of marshy waterways create the perfect grounds for these furry creatures. Although no recent official counts have been made, Jurand says that anecdotally, he suspects there are dozens of beavers among the park’s ponds and streams.

Russell Woolstenhulme, Furbearer Staff Biologist for the Nevada Department of Wildlife, says that beavers exist in the Las Vegas area, although surveying them has proven difficult. Most knowledge about them comes from sighting reports from the nearby Lake Mead and the Virgin, Muddy, and Colorado Rivers.

Beavers generally live in colonies of around six to ten, encompassing a territory of about two miles. Southern Nevada’s lack of woody trees limits beaver populations, with each colony needing about 10 acres for sustenance. But with the regrowth of native Willows and Cottonwoods along desert streams, some beavers have made their way into the heart of Las Vegas itself.

The benefits and burdens of beavers

Woolstenhulme says beavers can be a value-add to the landscape, slowing water flow with their dams. This can raise the water table, add to water quality by filtering out debris, and reduce erosion, which in turn can help prevent catastrophic destruction in these areas from intense wildfire and flooding. It also creates a sponge-like effect in the surrounding areas, allowing wetland vegetation to grow back.

“Beavers do fantastic things to help out riparian areas and stream bank erosion,” said Woolstenhulme. “Their structures help slow the water, spread it out, and help revegetate riparian species.” 

But he says that his office is often called to deal with problematic issues arising from beavers in the landscape, such as the damming of culverts and roads, or in eating vegetation in active restoration projects. 

Nevada’s water laws complicate the matter further.

“Because Nevada is the driest state in the nation, there are strict state laws on the prohibition of anything or anyone blocking the flow of water where people downstream have rights,” said Woolstenhulme. “This frequently necessitates the removal of beavers to keep that water flowing.”

Woolstenhulme has seen great advances in project areas where beavers are strategically reintroduced, such with NDOW projects near Eureka, Nevada. When done right, he says that beavers help re-establish riparian ecosystems’ natural rhythms.

“Where there is the greatest amount of erosion, we want beaver dams and pooling,” said Woolstenhulme. “Hopefully, as they continue working, we get into a wetter cycle, and those systems spread.”

Working with the Sagebrush Ecosystem Technical Team, human-created beaver dams, known as Beaver Dam Analogs or BDAs, were proactively placed before beaver reintroduction so the animals could already have a head-start on an environment tailored to their needs. 

Without these extra steps, relocation can fail.

“Beavers are one of the hardest North American species to relocate,” said Woolstenhulme. “They don’t like to be moved, so if your timing isn’t exactly right, they will try to walk home, and once they are on dry land, they are very vulnerable to predation.”   

Mimicking beavers, our ecosystem engineers

Sean Vogt, the Threatened & Endangered Species Lead and Acting State Wildlife & Fisheries Lead for the Bureau of Land Management, Nevada State Office, said that beavers have always been part of riparian landscapes throughout the Western U.S.

“Most streams in the Western U.S. had beavers in them, and this small, herbivorous species shaped these ecosystems,” said Vogt.

Vogt emphasized the vital importance of beavers as part of healthy riparian ecosystems, and how without them, these same systems are in disarray. 

“The majority of our waterways have lost their ability to function because they have become vertically incised and lost the ecosystem engineer that held them together, which was beavers,” said Vogt.

Many streams and rivers in the western U.S., especially the Colorado River’s watershed, have been depleted from water over-allocation, dams, development, and warmer temperatures, leaving communities more vulnerable to persistent drought and severe wildfires. 

The riverbeds themselves can become vertically-incised, becoming narrower, deeper, and creating more erosion. When this happens, it does not allow the river’s water to spread as easily into the surrounding landscape. This has made it harder for wildlife, such as fish, birds, and beavers, to make the river habitat their home.

Vogt says that getting back to where our western landscapes used to be, it is going to need more help than just the reintroduction of beavers.

“If we want to fix streams in the Western U.S. quickly, they are going to need a jumpstart,” said Vogt.

Vogt says that the simplest, quickest, cheapest way to fix this is through Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration, also known as LTPBR. These restoration techniques focus on restoring degraded streams by working with natural processes rather than relying on heavy engineering. 

Simple methods, such as installing Beaver Dam Analogs and rock formations lining riverbeds, can mimic beaver dams, causing water to pool and slow down. Studies show these techniques, as well as beavers themselves, create a positive impact on the recovery of riparian ecosystems and can help restore them to their once-natural state. They can especially help reduce the vertical incisions of rivers.

“By pretending you’re a beaver and bringing in the structure that allows the stream to slow down, you hold back sediment, which helps vertically-incised channels aggrade and eventually allows the floodplain to be inundated again,” said Vogt. “This will help stabilize the system, so when it does flood, the water has somewhere to go instead of continuing to downcut.”

Vogt says these processes can greatly help re-establish a landscape’s vegetation, and in some cases, create an ecosystem that would exist at 1000 feet higher in elevation. This, in turn, can entice beavers to return and continue to create a mutually beneficial landscape for themselves and for the riparian habitat around them.

“When a stream can inundate its floodplain again, it can recruit its own woody vegetation,” said Vogt. “When those trees come back, beavers can return and do the work for you.”

He says that the benefits to the surrounding riparian area are enormous and can create a stronger water flow throughout the year for downstream users.

“This process acts as a sponge, holding onto water in the flood plain longer, which is expressed as surface water later in the season,” said Vogt.

What it means when the beavers come back

Park biologists at the Wetlands Park have focused their riparian restoration efforts on reducing invasive plant species, specifically the invasive Tamarisk plant, which has deeply embedded itself along river pathways throughout Southern Nevada. 

In its place, the park replants native plants that are gathered from seeds in the park and germinated at Song Dog Nursery, which is a project of the National Park Service at Lake Mead. The park also applies the LTPBR technique of “pole planting” of native Willows and Cottonwoods, which takes branches or “poles” from trees within the park and plants them directly into the ground, allowing new trees to take root. 

The park utilizes naturally flowing water sources to avoid needing additional irrigation systems when planting.

“We use the topography and hydrology to our advantage to help give the trees a start while they are getting established without having to do an irrigation system,” said Jurand. 

As for the local beavers, Jurand says the Wetlands Park takes a restrained approach.

“Our motto is ‘Be zen with the beavers,’” said Jurand. “We let them do their thing, and we work around them.”

When it comes to riparian restoration, the return of beavers is a generally good sign, indicating that the conditions are hospitable for some of the ecosystem’s once-natural residents. Once established, beavers — and the Beaver Dam Analogs that mimic their work — can help the land support more greenery, hold onto more water, and limit the spread of wildfire and the devastation of floods. Those changes can have an outsized impact not only for wildlife but also for communities across the Western US.

“If folks want to use these landscapes in the future, they need to fix them, or they will not work for them as they have in the past,” said Vogt.