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Working with Beavers to Create Watershed Resilience – FbD Lunch & Learn Series
March 7 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Join us on Thursday, March 7th from 12pm – 1pm for the latest installment of the FbD Lunch & Learn Series. This month’s webinar will feature Jean-Paul A. Zagarola, Senior Program Manager for the Bonneville Environmental Foundation and Mark Heckert, principal and lead researcher for Beaver Creek Environmental Services, Inc., to speak on the benefits and challenges of working with beavers for ecological restoration and climate.
With a background as a restoration ecologist, Jean-Paul cultivates diverse collaboratives to mainstream beaver-based restoration and accelerate wildfire resilience actions in Oregon. Mark fancies himself a wildlife biologist and budding naturalist in South Puget Sound and owns and runs a small environmental consulting firm in Puyallup, focusing mainly on wetlands and beaver relocation. Beavers aren’t THE answer, but they’re one of them!
Jean-Paul will share about his work coordinating the Mid-Willamette Beaver Partnership in Oregon and their efforts to create a healthier, more resilient watershed and Mark will highlight some of the relocation work he’s been doing, how it was inspired by other efforts throughout the state, and some of the barriers to scaling these efforts up. We’ll also share some tools that can be helpful to strategize and prioritize where to relocate beavers.
As always, there will be time for questions and discussion for things like outreach & education needs, the beaver bill that didn’t make it out of the current legislative session, and more! We know there’s a lot of interest in and work going on around the state with beavers so we’re excited for a robust discussion!
While we update the specific details of the Lunch & Learn sessions monthly, the topics are informed by feedback from the Floodplains by Design network of practitioners and partners. If you would like to explore some of the topics and themes that emerged from our 2023 Input Gathering, you can view the themes here.
As always, we welcome feedback and ideas for upcoming topics so please don’t hesitate to reach out to myself (Allan Warren awarren@b-e-f.org), Carol MacIlroy (cmacilroy@gmail.com), Lisa Nelson, (lnel461@ecy.wa.gov) or Matt Gerlach, (mger461@ecy.wa.gov).
Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2125469094
Passcode: 1234