Give A Dam

Exciting news, Durango! 🎉 Join us for our very first Beaver Festival, where our wetland friends—animals, birds, fish, and even plants—will be strutting their stuff in fabulous costumes, all thanks to our amazing community! We're on a mission to raise $6,500 to support our reimbursement grant from the City of Durango. Ready to help? Just click the donate link below!

2024 marks our 4th joyful journey with the incredible Escalante Students, taking them on epic field trips to explore the beaver wetland habitat in Silverton. Plus, we're thrilled to continue our partnership with the Sierra Club for our third year of tours! 

Donate Below to Support Beaver Education with Silliness like this!

Your contribution helps us spread joy and knowledge about these amazing creatures while fostering a love for our wetlands and watersheds. Let’s make learning fun and impactful together!

2023

We are excited about the beaver education we have accomplished this year! Some of the highlights include partnering with our local Girl Scouts to create a beaver badge! The youth had such a good time learning about beavers by canoeing a beaver wetland and exploring a HUGE beaver lodge up close.

We are proud that this is our 3rd year working with Escalante Middle School. We provide the beaver curriculum and the youth get to come out to explore beaver habitat in Silverton, Colorado. This year, some of the youth even got to safely see a moose eating at one of the beaver ponds!

Here is a spectacular Beaver Infographic created by a student we worked with at a summer camp through a partnership with the Southwest Education Collaborative!

Providing Inspiring Thought Provoking Nature Based Education

Give a Dam (GAD), educating our community on the benefits of partnering with beavers to heal our riverscapes.  GAD fosters awareness of our sacred responsibility as humans to protect and further the natural world. Through education and hands-on water restoration projects GAD creates innovative, fun, and engaging opportunities for all community members of all ages to get involved in creating a sustainable water future.

            Why Beavers?

Beavers and the wetlands they create are a solution to many of the environmental issues we are facing today! 

Beaver-created wetlands recharge the water table - super helpful during drought, provide forest fire resilience - yes, beavers are nature's firefighters, filter pollutants from water, and as a keystone species beavers- provide essential habitat for many species of birds, fish, plants, and animals.

Partnering with beavers to restore their natural role within the ecosystem creates a resilient water future for the southwest.

Providing our community and schools (elementary through college level) with current and accurate scientific information on water restoration GAD seeks to create water steward leaders. 

With the help of a Fort Lewis College intern, we created this beautiful educational video highlighting a thriving beaver-created ecosystem that has been in existence since the 1800s. 

At Give A Dam we provide solutions for coexistence with our fury friends.

Relocating "nuisance" beavers to keep their numbers growing so they can continue to help restore our watersheds.

With the help of Wildlife 2000 and Birch Ecology, we helped relocate a family of beavers.

Fencing trees to protect them from beaver chew. This project was a partnership with the City of Durango to protect trees along our beautiful Animas River.

We are partnering with landowners to install Flow Devices so that beavers can stay where they live and humans can keep their infrastructures safe from floods and keep culverts open. 

Check out this cool video on how beavers survive winter in cold climates!

By donating today you get to be a part of creating a beautiful water future for the Southwest!