Leave It to the Beavers

https://isthmus.com/news/news/leave-it-to-the-beavers/

by DoreenMichele • 3 years ago

80 15 3 years ago

xoa2• 3 years ago

This is a topic near and dear to my heart. The historic positive, and massive, effect beavers had on America's ecology and hydrology are hard to understate. There were once hundreds of millions of them, slowing the flow of water and resisting storms, causing far more to go into the ground, creating safe rich habitats for a variety of other plants and animals. They're natural self-replicating terraformers and really could have a major impact on responding to water problems. I highly recommend the book "Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter" [0]. Of course having nearly wiped them out in the fur trade we've since built some of our society around a beaver-eliminated environment and so there it's going to be artificially harder in some cases to have them return naturally if it will result in water over infrastructure. But where they can live we should want them, and there are clever new management methods like Beaver Deceivers [1] that can more effectively handle water levels without harming/removing the beavers (which is generally a temporary solution anyway since they follow water paths and new ones will appear before long). Would be great to see more governments embrace that.

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0: https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/eager-paperback/

1: https://beaverdeceivers.com/

sandworm1012• 3 years ago

Beaver deceivers work to minimize their impact on the local environment. They specifically work against all the one thing beavers really provide: beaver ponds. Eliminating or minimizing those ponds directly denies the benifits beavers provide to the landscape.

xoa2• 3 years ago

I don't understand what point you're trying to make with such a ridiculously broad statement? "The landscape" encompasses a big area. It is not possible to simply order every arbitrary road or building in the country that would be impacted by a return to historic ecology moved. We struggle right now to even get people moved out of or adapt to known existing flood plains, even after they've been flooded! If we'd built with that in mind from the start that would be ideal but obviously that's, well, water over (or under) the dam now.

The point of options like beaver deceivers is aid in coexistence, and to deploy them with precision in places where it's really infeasible to adapt (at least for now) to a returning beaver presence. That way water level can be managed without (repeatedly) killing them, particularly as the beaver population overall away from denser human areas is allowed to return towards a natural level. And even when used they're not binary, they can allow some controlled pond formation, even if not quite as big as the beavers would like. That still leaves the beavers in some cases able to live there for a time, or else move on upstream to better areas. Sure it's a compromise solution, but given the long standing default has been to shoot/trap/poison them it's a valuable tool towards getting things back on track.

throw0101a• 3 years ago

They're natural self-replicating terraformers […]

So they should be on the first mission to Mars?

danparsonson• 3 years ago

Who else is going to clear all the trees?

dvh• 3 years ago

What a coincidence, just yesterday I've seen my first beaver dam: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F3P8DzjWoAA79Uw?format=jpg&name=...

j_m_b• 3 years ago

I had the great fortune of growing up near beavers in the creek near my house. They would build dams in areas where rocks had gathered in the creek, utilizing the natural advantage instead of starting from scratch. I remember watching them swim in and out of their lodge with their young kits. They didn't really flood areas, they just raised the level of the creek. Heavy rains would wipe out their dams and they'd rebuild. Fascinating creatures!

ajuc• 3 years ago

Some people (mostly the same that think global warming isn't happening, then that it's not our fault then that there's nothing we can do - anything to justify not changing our behavior basically) like to complain that beaver dams can't be good for the environment if human dams are bad for environment.

The main difference is that human dams usually require the river to be regulated, whereas beaver dams make river move around, and after a few years the dams move as well, changing the riverbed again. This cycle repeats, and after a while beavers make the river change its bed dozens of times, creating a wide, green marsh, storing lots of water in shaded, green landscape, only small part of which is the current riverbed.

It's also not a big obstacle for fish, because the dams leak, and change their positions every few years. So it does not stop fish migration and breeding significantly.

We on the other hand create a narrow regulated riverbed and hard obstacles that stay in one place for decades. The bodies of water we create aren't shaded, so a lot of water is lost to evaporation. There's not much new plantlife (in fact it's usually a net loss when you account for the flooded area). The high water head creates a lot of pressure and accelerates the water downstream, contributing further to the desertification of the area.

sebmellen• 3 years ago

$15 million dollars spent on state-ordered beaver killings! Absurd!

pixl972• 3 years ago

They can do some pretty serious infra damage if left unchecked in the wrong places. Turning underpasses and culverts into lakes can cause flooding and road destabilization.

Not that we should wipe them all out like we seem to now.

InvaderFizz• 3 years ago

There is a really great podcast episode[0] about beavers and their long term impact. The TLDR is that beavers are prolific terraformers and much of the western landscapes and weather we take for granted are the direct result of beavers. I certainly came away from this episode with a new respect for beavers.

0: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YBmKwQ9SPt0

KaiserPro• 3 years ago

I grew up in rural east england. We have a range of low lying "prairies" along with glacial flattened low hills.

One of the dogmas since the 30s has been drainage. Flooding is bad, drainage is good.

The problem is that drainage was expensive to create and update. so they chose to put it in places where it really needed.

With modern equipment you can dig ditches, put in drains and make sure that water runs off the land Uber quick.

Combine that with shitty soils, that are left bare and barren, it means that the dwell time for rain water has dropped dramatically. This means that less soaks in and more drought happens. Not only that but there are less habitats for insects.

But conversely flooding gets worse down stream, because there is no storage, so everything is a flash flood.

The solution of course is better drainage....

Beavers are an answer. But it needs support from farmers, urban planners, land owners and law makers.

Leave It to the Beavers

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