Friday July 24

This morning, we met briefly with Jennifer DeRose, who is a cultural resource manager for the tribe. An anthropologist by trade, she does very little excavation, as the tribe prefers to leave artifacts interred whenever possible. Instead, she monitors the lake bed during the winter, when the lake drops about 8 feet, to monitor known settlements for erosion damage. If artifacts come to the surface, then they can be sent to the repository to protect them from looters.

After speaking to Jennifer, a team came to take up so our next project. Angelo Vitale, a natural resource manager for the tribe. took us out to a natural beaver dam on a stream which was restored in 2004. The beaver dams have caused water to spread out into the flood plane, creating large amounts of wetland habitat and storing water in the summer months.


Then, he took us to an artificial beaver dam which was built by their summer youth corp. An individual beaver dam in isolation on a stream is in grave danger of being washed out in high flows. But when there are multiple beaver dams on the same river system, it slows the water and prevents washouts.



Then, we had a truly unique opportunity; we got to build an artificial beaver dam for ourselves. There were posts drilled into the creek bed where an old beaver dam had been, and we used large limbs, straw, and mud to build the dam. Though it wasn't nearly as good as a real beaver dam at retaining water, we still managed to back up nearly a foot of water! The hope is that students will keep coming back to this same location to maintain the dam, until enough beavers move in that they can do the job themselves.


This was a fabulous last activity for a really incredible trip. Tomorrow, we will head to the Coeur d'Alene Casino and Resort, where Monet's grandfather Dave Matheson has graciously offered us breakfast at the buffet there. Then, we make the long journey home!