Working at a Watershed Scale

Across British Columbia, declining watershed health continues to reduce the quality and availability of habitat for fish and wildlife. These impacts don’t occur in isolation. When wetlands are lost and water moves too quickly through the landscape, streams dry out, floodplains disconnect, and entire watersheds become more vulnerable to drought, wildfire, and flooding.

Working at a watershed scale means restoring the natural processes that slow, store, and spread water across connected streams, wetlands, and floodplains. The 10,000 Wetlands Initiative reflects the scale of restoration required to reverse decades of wetland loss across B.C., recognizing that many small wetlands, restored across connected landscapes, can collectively deliver significant and lasting benefits.

Through this initiative, Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration (LTPBR) integrates science, local and Indigenous knowledge, and on-the-ground implementation to restore watershed function at the scale where impacts are felt.

Restoring Natural Processes

In many degraded watersheds, altered stream channels, disconnected floodplains, and limited vegetation make it difficult for natural wetland processes to function. In these settings, beavers often cannot survive or persist without changes to habitat conditions.

BCWF addresses this by using LTPBR approaches that work with natural processes to restore streams and wetlands. Rather than relying on heavy equipment or engineered infrastructure, LTPBR uses simple, locally sourced materials to mimic natural features and encourage ecosystems to recover over time.

As part of this work, BCWF builds Beaver Dam Analogues (BDAs) and Post-Assisted Log Structures (PALS). These human-built structures are designed to mimic the functions of natural beaver dams and log jams by slowing water, raising stream levels, and reconnecting floodplains.

Beaver Dam Analogues (BDAs)

Beaver Dam Analogues (BDAs) are built by hand using locally sourced branches and mud to mimic beaver dams. Constructed across small streams, BDAs slow water and gently raise stream levels, allowing water to spread into surrounding areas. By holding water on the landscape, BDAs help reconnect streams with their floodplains, form wetlands, and increase natural water storage.

Post-Assisted Log Structures (PALS)

Post-Assisted Log Structures (PALS) are built by hand using locally sourced wood, and natural materials like sticks and rocks to mimic natural log jams. PALS are placed within stream channels to improve stability and complexity, reducing erosion, capturing sediment, and creating deeper pools and varied flow that provide habitat for fish and wildlife.

Before & After

As part of this work, BCWF builds restoration structures that mimic the way beavers naturally shape streams and wetlands. These low-tech features are designed to slow water, reconnect floodplains, and restore natural stream processes.

Over time, BDAs and PALS help turn eroding, dry channels into wetter, more resilient systems. The result is healthier streams and floodplains that retain water longer, support biodiversity, and are better able to withstand drought, wildfire, and flooding.

Photo slider description: Before and after restoration. In 2024, the B.C. Wildlife Federation partnered with the Nooaitch Indian Band and the Lower Nicola Indian Band to install nine Beaver Dam Analogues along Voght Creek near Merritt, B.C. Just one year later, water is reconnecting with the floodplain, plants are returning, and new habitat is forming for fish and wildlife.

Partnerships and Shared Stewardship

Through collaboration, training, and shared learning, we aim to support a growing network of practitioners who can carry this work forward, helping ensure restoration efforts are locally led, technically sound, and scalable over the long term. LTPBR approaches are still relatively new in British Columbia, and as this work grows, we are grateful to the many partners who help advance it by contributing local knowledge, technical expertise, capacity, and on-the-ground support.

The work delivered through BCWF’s 10,000 Wetlands Initiative would not be possible without strong partnerships and shared stewardship. Restoring wetlands and watershed processes at this scale requires collaboration across communities, sectors, and regions.

History of The Beaver in North America

Over millions of years, beavers evolved as ecosystem engineers, shaping nearly every watershed in North America to meet their own needs. By building dams and working with natural stream processes, they slowed water, raised water levels, and created wetlands that also supported fish and wildlife.

These beaver-created wetlands stored water on the landscape, reduced erosion, and helped maintain healthy watersheds, all without cost or human intervention. During the fur trade era, heavy trapping caused beaver populations to decline, and many of these wetlands were lost. Since then, human land use and infrastructure have further altered rivers and floodplains, changing how water moves through the landscape.

Today, beavers are often seen as a source of conflict where roads, farms, and communities overlap with streams and floodplains. Yet without beavers and the wetlands they create, water moves through watersheds more quickly. Streams become drier in summer, wetlands disappear, and less water is stored in soils and floodplains, reducing habitat for fish and wildlife and increasing vulnerability to drought, wildfire, and flooding.

This is why, in many places, habitat must first be restored using human-built structures that mimic beaver activity before beavers can safely return and thrive.