Placer County, California, considers spending millions to restore the dry, Doty Ravine creek bed, decides instead to spend $58,000 re-establishing the creek’s beaver population.
Damion Ciotti, a restoration biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who led the project, said hepredicted the Doty Ravine project would take a decade to reconnect the stream to the floodplain, but to his surprise, it was restored in just three years.
“It was insane, it was awesome,” said Lynnette Batt, the conservation director of the Placer Land Trust, which owns and maintains the Doty Ravine Preserve.
“It went from dry grassland. .. to totally revegetated, trees popping up, willows, wetland plants of all types, different meandering stream channels across about 60 acres of floodplain,” she said.
