A Story Taught by Beaver

Tales on the Smith Fork is “a story about process-based riparian restoration as taught by beaver,” and the Colorado Farm & Food Alliance’s first feature film - made possible by the LOR Foundation. In 2023, the LOR Foundation provided a grant to help CO Farm & Food Alliance complete two films looking at local watershed restoration work being undertaken by area landowners. The second film is expected to premiere this summer. 

Produced by Delta County filmmaker David Jacobson, Tales on the Smith Fork takes a tour of a “low-tech process-based restoration” project at Rancho Largo, a ranch outside of Crawford Colorado along the Smith Fork of the Gunnison River. 

LTPBR, as this type of rehabilitation work is sometimes called, uses techniques meant to boost and restore natural functions. Also called “nature-based solutions,” these techniques seek to strengthen and re-establish ecosystem-services, or the healthy functioning of natural systems that provide important human benefits. This type of riparian rehabilitation is thought to be one effective adaptation and mitigation strategy to prepare for climate change and global heating and to help preserve biodiversity in the soils, vegetation and wildlife. 

At the Rancho Largo project, as told in the film, volunteers organized by Elizabeth with Colorado Farm & Food Alliance helped to complete work in the summer of 2023 in support of restoration being led and stewarded by Jake Hartter of the Western Slope Conservation Center. 

The project team repaired a “beaver dam analog,” or BDA, that has helped to keep side-channels wet longer into the year. The film visits this work four months later, at the end of the growing season to find out what has happened in the meanwhile and about lessons learned. 

The film, which was commissioned and co-produced by the Colorado Farm & Food Alliance, was funded by the LOR Foundation - working with people in rural places to improve quality of life. The  restoration project was led by the Conservation Center with a grant from the Colorado Watershed Assembly in partnership with American Rivers. 

Tales on the Smith Fork

And available on our YouTube channel youtube.com/@colofarmfood