Dam Good

Environmentalist Jessie Griffen ’10 partners with furry engineers.

“People call it drive-by country, but if you take the time to look closely, there’s a lot of beauty, a lot of color, a lot of wildlife,” Griffen says of the semiarid desert in southeastern Oregon. That’s where she works as a restoration project manager with the Nature Conservancy, in partnership with Oregon Desert Land Trust. Griffen oversees creeks, streams, and wet meadows on 16,000 acres owned by the land trust, plus a half-million acres of public grazing land. To restore this wildlife habitat, Griffen takes a cue from one of nature’s best floodplain engineers.

“We’re using a lot of beaver mimicry—going into streams and building fake beaver dams,” she says. “This helps fix the hydrology, which helps fix the vegetation. Then the beavers slow water down, spread it out, and allow meadows to act like sponges.”

A linguistics major who earned her master’s in natural resources and ecological planning, Griffen lives in Baker City, Oregon, with her son and husband. “My work doesn’t just fulfill my responsibility to steward the places that sustain us,” she says. “It’s also restorative.”

Portfolio

Book cover Original Sin with photo of hands over face
Alumni Books
New titles from Dartmouth writers (July/August 2025)
Woman posing with art sculpture
Inspiration in the Adirondacks
Artist Catherine Ross Haskins ’94 transforms an old grain mill into a vibrant arts hub.
Comeback Story

Alumni first returned to campus for official reunions in 1855.

Illustration of woman in movie theater eating popcorn
Katie Silberman ’09
A screenwriter on storytelling in Hollywood

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