North of Gold Creek on the Canadian border sits a parcel included in mine’s mitigation plan. This property will be placed under a perpetual conservation easement to ensure continued protection and preservation. OHA is preparing to implement additional mitigation measures on this site, to:

a) Remediate some of the impacts created by loss of beaver, decades of overgrazing, and removal of woody debris

b) Moderate the increased stream velocity caused by a culvert (below, at right), and increase connectivity for fish passage

c) Raise the water table to again seasonally flood the soil where wetlands used to be

On this parcel, a substantial portion of Myers Creek is incised (below, at left), and each year, spring runoff fails to move onto the west side of the property. What should be a thriving wetland is now too dry to support hydrophytic vegetation.

OHA plans to use natural materials such as wood and rock to slow down and back up the water so that spring runoff will inundate the soil and create the conditions necessary for wetland plants and animals to fluorish. By supporting the reestablishment of natural ecological processes, OHA will help shift this parcel back to the healthy wetland it once was.

Beaver are hardworking wetland engineers. Currently the habitat is too degraded to support beaver on much of the site. By raising the water table, OHA will help improve conditions so that more vegetation will grow, and beaver will have the materials necessary help restore the channel.

Document: Beaver Dam Inventory 2010 (1.5 MB)

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