Exploring Beaver Behavior in North Creek Wetland

Words and photos by guest blogger and former Cascadia student Dash Paulson. Adapted from an arcGIS story map at https://arcg.is/1TmjOK

The shared campus at the University of Washington Bothell and Cascadia College has a secret. Just beyond the athletic fields and campus farm, a lush green wall of willows, salmonberry, and red-twig dogwood marks the edge of one of the most complex and successful wetland restoration projects in the history of Washington: the North Creek wetland. Between 1997 and 2002, the Washington State Higher Education Coordinating Board worked with professors and restoration practitioners to restore 58-acres of degraded pasture land into a floodplain wetland that now teems with hundreds of plant and animal species. Among those inhabitants, beavers have emerged as key players in shaping this watery urban wilderness.

The vegetarian beavers are more than residents; they are ecosystem engineers. Their tree-cutting and dam-building activities create large, shallow ponds that store water and mitigate drought and floods. These aquatic habitats also improve water quality by slowing down sediment and pollutants that fall out of suspension and become trapped in the soil. Beaver habitat creation provides habitat for dozens of species of plants, insects, amphibians, fish, and waterfowl. In our increasingly urbanized world, the presence of beavers in places like the North Creek Wetland is a hopeful example of nature coexisting alongside human development.

An example of beavers building short but very long earthen dams or sod berms to contain water in the wetland. The semi-aquatic rodents prefer to swim through 1-3 feet of water and they work hard to expand these shallow habitats that are also excellent habitat for insects and amphibians.

Last September, I teamed up with the campus Grounds and Wetlands Operations team to monitor beaver activity in the wetland. Besides trekking into the wetland to make ground observations, I’ve used drones to capture the seasonal changes of the wetland and deployed wildlife cameras to study the beavers behavior. In late May, I found the beavers doing something completely new….

Dam Good Fun!

Friendly games of wrestling and shoving may help Beavers learn defense skills

What are these two beavers in the North Creek wetland doing? They seem pretty close and the water is cloudy from sediment.

• 

  It looks like a wrestling match!

• 

  Or perhaps a dance? Even though their orange teeth are bared, this is a friendly game. Beavers (Castor canadensis) only bite when defending their lives or family territory (Rosell and Campbell-Palmer 2022).

A smaller beaver, probably a yearling related to these two, swims around the action, keeping an eye on these early morning contests of strength.

These two will push each other around in circles, all over the shallow pond in front of the family lodge. 

The beaver’s family lodge is more than 7 feet tall, surrounded by water on three sides, and continually repaired and added onto. A stand of young Oregon Ash (Fraxinus latifolia) grow through the lodge, perhaps acting as support beams for the mighty beaver fort.

Beaver families can include 2 to 12 related individuals and often include kits (0-1 years old), yearlings (1-2 years old), and parents (Rosell and Campbell-Palmer 2022). They can also include grandparents, brothers, sisters, and in-laws! Beavers will usually live up to 12 years old in the wild (WDFW), but some beavers have lived up to 30 birthdays living in captivity (Smithsonian 2016).

• 

• 

• 

Almost every morning between May 26 and June 13, 2024, the beavers square off in a pushing match, usually starting just before 6 AM. The action is captured by motion activated Browning 2019 camera traps, set out to monitor the beaver’s activities in the wetland. When the match begins, the sun has barely risen. In the wan light, the camera flashes bursts of infrared light, invisible to human and beaver eyes, to illuminate the scene and capture a black and white image. It might seem early, but these games occur at the end of the beaver’s working day. Most beaver families are nocturnal and crepuscular (active at twilight) so they only start getting busy when the sun goes down.

These two will push each other all around the front yard of the family lodge and can keep at it for at least 5 minutes without a break! According to “Beavers: Ecology, Behaviour, Conservation and Management” these playful shoving matches help prepare younger beavers for when they need to leave the lodge, usually when they’re 2 to 3 years old. All this wrestling and pushing helps them build muscle and learn the right combination of moves to win in a fight with another beaver over territory.

References

• Rosell, Frank, and Roisin Campbell-Palmer. Beavers : Ecology, Behaviour, Conservation, and Management. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2022.
• Smithsonian National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute. 2016 Apr 25. Beaver. Smithsonian’s National Zoo. https://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/beaver.
• Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. “Beaver | Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife.” Wdfw.wa.gov, wdfw.wa.gov/species-habitats/species/castor-canadensis.

This work was done by Dash for the UW Wetland program. Cascadia is funded by King County Water Treatment Division. Dash’s work is featured here as a connected partner for our campus! We appreciate their ongoing support, and encourage you to look into learning about stormwater, wetlands, ways to manage your own home, and help in the community!

BASSP Capstone: Tracking Pollution on the Duwamish using QGIS software

written by Bachelor of Applied Science in Sustainable Practices senior Peter B.

I remember acutely the moment when I decided that I wanted to take concerted action against climate change. It was September of 2020, when everything in Washington was on fire for weeks at a time. I could barely see the blood red sun through the haze of fire smoke. I had been working a job remotely since the pandemic had started. I couldn’t visit friends because of covid. I couldn’t go outside because of my smoke based chest pains. I was stuck inside my apartment and I was miserable. I felt so small, so powerless, up against the faceless tyrant of Climate change, dictating how I could live my life. How could I make a change?

It took time to find a path that aligned with my values. A chance encounter with a professor at a trivia night steered my attention towards Cascadia College- a small college in Bothell that offered a 2 year bachelor’s program. The Bachelor’s in Applied Science for Sustainable Practices, shortened to BASSP, is a program that helps tie in aspects of environmental science with aspects of policy, business administration, and equity. How can we balance quality of life with a stable ecosystem? How can we widen the net of civic participation, so we can ensure we can help as many people as we can who need it? So much of our society relies on growth at any cost, which lays the foundation for pollution, climate change, and
inequity. Our power in this program comes from engaging with our community and finding ways to bring more people into the conversations about how we can increase overall sustainability in our communities.

Towards the end of our bachelors program, students are given a chance to apply what we’ve learned into an overarching culmination called a capstone project. We take what we’ve learned in our classes, and find people or organizations who would benefit by increasing their scope of sustainability in some way. This could include introducing composting into grocery stores, or increasing awareness of recycling habits, or creating a children’s story that emphasizes local ecological species. Throughout my time at Cascadia, I learned more about the Duwamish River- a local river in Seattle that has become notorious for its legacy as a superfund site after pollution from many industries, like Boeing.

For my capstone project, I had the opportunity to work with a team of researchers and students at University of Washington Bothell, who worked with Dr. Melanie Malone under a grant that helps groups explore climate change and its impacts on vulnerable communities that live near the Duwamish river. This grant focused on expanding avenues of equity and participation, by helping give voices to people who live near the Duwamish River to hear about potential sources of contamination that have not yet been documented by state or federal agencies.

When it comes to pollution in a river like the Duwamish, how does one approach the act of remediation and pollution mitigation? It is important to keep both aspects in mind- solve past issues while preventing future issues. The Duwamish River was classified as a superfund site by the EPA in 2001. Since then, roughly $340 million dollars have been spent removing the contaminated dredge from the bottom of the river. More work remains, though, as only roughly half of the site has been properly remediated since its classification as a superfund site 20 years ago.

The intended goal for this capstone project is to help lay the foundation for others in this group to combine their research and testing data with this map in order to look with greater confidence at the potential sources of pollution on the Duwamish. Our remediation efforts will only work if we can make sure pollution does not continue after the river is cleaned up. And that starts with creating tools to hold people and companies accountable for their pollution. One of the largest issues historically came from the challenges of tracking where pollution was coming from. Fifty years of industrial runoff from various areas of industry along the mouth of the river made it almost impossible to place blame on any of the particular actors guilty of polluting the river. How can we better track where pollution might be coming from? How can we increase accountability when a company pollutes into our waterways?

When it rains near the Duwamish, water collects in storm drains, and it carries pollution that might have existed on the ground of properties near the river mouth. Barring severe weather events, storm drains tend to flow consistently from one point to another until they reach their outfall point on the river. This means that a map could be constructed that can link areas where rainfall flows into storm drains up to their exit through outfalls into the Duwamish river. This means that a map like this could be combined with water quality tests to help paint a more in depth picture of where pollution might potentially be coming from.

The goal here is twofold- to take accounts from local residents about their observations of pollution on the Duwamish river, and pair those observations to water quality tests from the Grant research team, and try and track outfalls near these tests to potential polluters who may have let runoff flow from their properties into the river. The goals here is to provide a tool for these researchers at UW Bothell to better track where pollution might be coming from. This project does not represent an end-all be all in tracking pollution, but it provides additional insight into tracking the sources of pollution. The moment we can start holding companies accountable is the moment we can start to take action on prevention over remediation. I am hopeful that this capstone project, while a minor part in the remediation of the Duwamish river, can be used to help restore it to its original beauty. Especially so people living near it can enjoy what the Duwamish has to offer.

The Bachelor of Applied Science in Sustainable Practices program hosts students who have completed an associate degree or higher, also helping professionals with bachelor’s degrees already retrain into the sustainability field! This two year program has a capstone project as part of the program as seen above, and we invite you to look at what Cascadia College can offer you for education in Sustainability! Find out more at www.cascadia.edu/bassp

The Campus Wetland

The Cascadia College joint campus encompasses 58 acres of wetland, known as the North Creek Wetland. This set-aside green space is an on-going wetland restoration project that began in 1997 where nature can and is encouraged to grow and thrive uninterrupted. The construction of the joint Cascadia College and UW Bothell campus was completed in 2001.   Since then, the wetland has been a vital part of sustainability and environmental awareness, providing students, professors, researchers, and visitors a unique opportunity for study and exploration. Campus has staff on the grounds team caring for, planting new trees, and maintaining trails and areas of the wetland for the past 20 years! This care allows for classes to truly interact or integrate with the natural wetland area right on campus!

Visitors are welcome to walk, jog, or bicycle along miles of public paved trails along the perimeter of wetland (North Creek Trail), which is part of the greater Burke-Gilman trail. There is a public access boardwalk the public is welcome to enjoy for a closer look. Check out the complete access regulations for more details.

Want to see more images of our wetland? Please take a look at the digital archive! (click ‘browse collection’ on the left to see all images)

a view of one part of North Creek as it passes through the wetland, photo by Stephan Classen

The wetland itself is not open to the public for walking or hiking – please remain on paved trails and pathways. Pets are always to be on-leash. Some unpaved areas are used by grounds team, staff, and researchers for restoration and research work, and walkways may be unstable, not level, or hazardous. See the contact information at the bottom if you would be interested in a wetland tour!

Crows over the library, photo by Colleen Willson

In the winter months, a large ‘murder’ of crows roosts in our wetlands every evening, and is a recommended sight for bird watching. Crows come in estimated numbers of 10,000 around downtown Bothell, the joint campus, and the campus wetland, and will roost all evening.

The Boardwalk:
This wood-planked walkway can be accessed near the sports fields. It allows visitors to step further into the wetland with minimal disturbance to the natural habitat it surrounds—all the while keeping your feet dry. Standing on the circular outcrop at the end of the boardwalk, visitors will have a clear view of the North Creek as it flows through the wetland while being surrounded in the lush greenery in the heart of the sprawling city of Bothell.

Boardwalk into the wetland, photo by Stephan Classen

Winter’s gathering of the murder of crows, photo by Colleen Willson

Greenhouse:
On the western side of the wetland is the UW Bothell Sarah Simonds Green Conservatory, construction completed in 2013. It is an area including the green house, classrooms, and support spaces for education, research, and public outreach. The building structures were designed to be sustainable and energy efficient. While it isn’t open to the public, it’s a good place to rest and look into what is growing at UW Bothell and Cascadia!

The Sarah Simonds Green Conservatory, photo by Stephan Classen

If you have interest in deeper workings or research in the wetland, permission is required, through easy to obtain permits from UW Bothell: Exploration Permit/Research Permit.

Please remain on public paved paths, as the upkeep and safety of unpaved areas is not guaranteed. Guided tours with wetland staff are also available.

Contact bas@cascadia.edu for tour information, along with any questions you may have about the wetland.

Overhead view of the campus, you can see North Creek passing through the 58-acre wetland entering on the right side, and leaving campus on the left!

“Lake Truly” as it is affectionately called, is the deeper submerged area on the right.

written in part by Environmental Technology and Sustainable Practices student Sebastian Zhao