In May of this year I drove out from Portland to the small town of Condon, OR, to paint a mural. The subject was steelhead, a large and beautiful species of trout that, like salmon, is anadromous; meaning that it swims upriver from the ocean to the interior of the continent to reproduce. Like salmon, steelhead populations have crashed to catastrophic levels after a century-long orgy of dam-building which wreaked havoc across the rivers of North America. Hopeful signs are beginning to emerge, however, as some dams are starting to come out- and some of the other factors that have steelhead decline have begun to be ameliorated. One of those factors is the reintroduction of beavers to western rivers and creeks.
Just as the dams destroyed the natural rhythms of most of the rivers in the west, the wholesale slaughter and removal of beavers caused massive changes in watercourses. When the beavers vanished, so did the dams they built.
It may seem odd to say that the arrival of one kind of dam destroyed the west and the loss of another prevented it from being healed, but it’s true: the structures that beavers historically built across rivers to impound water created ponds where steelhead could spawn, and which spread up creeks and streams like jeweled chains, capturing water during droughts and recharging the aquifers under the soil. The concrete monstrosities that replaced them are near-impassable barriers to fish, and the huge slackwater lakes that they create are too warm and slow for many of the fish that make it past them to survive in.
In recent years efforts to reintroduce beavers have gathered steam, and so have a series of projects to build Beaver Dam Analogues- structures which can be installed by people which mimic the effects of beaver dams. Just outside of Condon, OR, the Gilliam County Soil and Water Conservation District has been installing BDAs on creeks flowing into the John Day River- and the steelhead have found them and are making a comeback.
Thanks to the Condon Arts Council for support of this project and to the town of Condon for creating an entirely new ordinance to permit it- the first mural in town! Read more here.
This is the 29th mural in the Endangered Species Mural Project, sponsored by the Center for Biological Diversity. The other murals can be seen here.
