Stimulus Money for New Mexico Spent On Studying Beaver Dams in Yellowstone

One of the first New Mexico projects to receive funds from the Obama stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, had nothing to do with New Mexico. It was a $184,986 study of beaver dams in Yellowstone National Park, which is located not in the Land of Enchantment, but in the Cowboy State, in northwestern Wyoming. With money from the stimulus package, the National Science Foundation awarded the grant to the University of New Mexico “to document beaver-related sediments in floodplains of small streams in the greater Yellowstone area, in deposits dating from the present back to the end of the last glaciation about 12,000 years ago (the Holocene epoch).”  The Albuquerque Journal noticed this grant that seemed out place for New Mexico economic stimulus spending back in 2010. Its editorial board wondered what benefit to the state’s economy would be derived from spending federal funds to study beaver dams in Yellowstone National Park. Now we know. Not much. Grantees of stimulus funds are required to report to the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board on a quarterly basis the number of jobs created or saved by their application of stimulus funding. Those results are published at recovery.gov. We now have eleven quarters of reporting on this grant. It tells us that this project has created or saved less than 1/3 full time job on average during the three years the grant has been active...more