Declining beaver populations in Rocky Mountain National Park

Baker, Bruce; Cooper, David; Westbrook, Cherie; Czarnowski, Ken; Johnson, Therese; Monello, Ryan; Peinetti, H.; Stanley, Tom; Mitchell, David

This final report is a compilation of pertinent completed and submitted papers as of January 2005. It does not include 3 expected papers from Cherie Westbrook's Ph.D. dissertation. She is expected to complete these papers and her Ph.D. at Colorado State University (CSU) by September 1, 2005 under contract to CSU via David Cooper, her major advisor and co-investigator on the NRPP study. This report does not include 2 draft papers by Bruce Baker, Raul Peinetti, and Mike Coughenour that report results from an ecological modeling study of beaver, elk, and willow interactions funded primarily by the Park Oriented Biological Support program; we hope to have these papers completed by early summer 2005. Finally, a synthesis paper is planned after all the separate components of the research is completed and reported in individual papers. In addition, much information, including beaver surveys and historical reviews that are likely not publishable as scientific papers, have been fully documented in progress reports FY99 FY 03 on file at ROMO. The objectives statement below summarizes these progress reports. The objectives of this research are to evaluate declining beaver populations in Rocky Mountain National Park (ROMO) and beaver ecology in the Kawuneeche Valley, including the effects of dewatering by the Grand Ditch. In FY99 we surveyed beaver populations and identified possible limiting factors throughout the park. In FY00 we repeated beaver surveys on the east side and evaluated limiting factors and beaver historical declines, evaluated designs to understand effects of the Grand Ditch on the Colorado River via experimental water diversions and water table effects of existing beaver dams, collected data to evaluate elk browsing effects on regrowth of beaver-cut willow, and collected data to evaluate the use and availability of riparian shrubs by a beaver colony in Moraine Park. In FY01 we initiated the radio telemetry portion of the study to evaluate beaver mortality, dispersal, and other population characteristics on the east side of the Park and continued ongoing research to understand how the Grand Ditch affects beaver ecology in the Kawuneeche Valley. In FY02 we continued monitoring radioed beaver on the east side of the Park, interpreted data on the interaction of beaver and elk herbivory as a mechanism of declining willow, and continued the Grand Ditch study (including the addition of Ph.D. student Cherie Westbrook to the project). In FY03 we completed monitoring radioed beaver on the east side of the Park, submitted a paper to Ecological Applications entitled Interaction of beaver and elk herbivory suppresses compensatory growth in willow', and continued the Grand Ditch study. In FY04 we revised a paper accepted for publication by Ecological Applications, published and presented 2 papers in Proceedings of the Colorado Riparian Association, and submitted papers to the Wildlife Society Bulletin and Rangeland Ecology and Management. In addition, we collected new field data for the Kawuneeche Valley study (see ROMO Investigator's Annual Report), continued data analysis, and prepared a status report (CSU research proposal) to document remaining work proposed for this project (as of January 2005) as part of Cherie Westbrook's Ph.D. program at Colorado State University.

Declining beaver populations in Rocky Mountain National Park

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