Leave it to beavers

Tired of Catastrophic Wildfires, Floods, and Drought?     

Leave it to Beavers.

Hey, beavers INVENTED infrastructure!  

Just call them The Gnarly Corps of Engineers. 

Are beavers our survival “kits”?  

Beaver ponds and associated wetlands provide natural firebreaks that limit spread of wildfires.  

https://wildlife.org/beavers-create-fire-resistant-forest-patches/

https://wildfiretoday.com/2021/05/05/beavers-can-affect-wildfires/

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/beavers-firefighters-wildfires-california-oregon

Beavers and Wildfire.  https://beaverworks.org/beavers-and-wildfire/

Smokey the Beaver: beaver-dammed riparian corridors stay green during wildfire. https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/eap.2225

Webinar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39CWo2Qk7TM

Beaver dams, ponds, and associated wetlands absorb, store, and buffer flow of floodwaters to limit catastrophic flooding.  

Beaver dams attenuate flow:  A multi-site study.  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hyp.14017

Beaver Wetlands. https://www.ecotoneinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/brown-and-fouty-2011-beaver-wetlands.pdf

Flood Reduction through Wetland Restoration: The Upper Mississippi River Basin as a Case History https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1526-100X.1995.tb00070.x

Re-creating Urban Wetlands. https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/60796/1/mgs-262.pdf#page=111

Beavers limit drought by raising and stabilizing water table levels.   

Beaver dams and overbank floods influence groundwater–surface water interactions of a Rocky Mountain riparian area. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2005WR004560

Livestock management, beaver, and climate influences on riparian vegetation in a semi-arid landscape. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0208928

Eurasian beaver activity increases water storage, attenuates flow and mitigates diffuse pollution from intensively-managed grasslands https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969716323099

Other Beaver Benefits:  

They cost nothing except the land and other resources they need to exist.  They work for free.  

Beavers exert positive impact on waterbirds and biological diversity:

Whole-community facilitation by beaver: ecosystem engineer increases waterbird diversity https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/aqc.2437

Positive impact on fish populations: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep28581

(although this is not always the case) https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/fedaidpdfs/fds02-10.pdf

Beavers can be domesticated.  https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=DS19660117.2.61&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------1

Beavers are intensely cute.  Dare to search Internet images for “beaver kit”.  

They were here first.  

This is worth repeating:  The wildfire/flood control and drought defense beavers provide costs nothing other than allowing them to do their thing.  They will be our ecologically mutualistic partners if we let them.  

Calls to Action:

Educate people about beavers and how they can help us.  

Use education to reverse backward thinking (for example, that found in “Identifying and Managing Mountain Beaver Damage to Forest Resources” https://catalog.extension.oregonstate.edu/em9063 and “Problems associated with beaver in stream or floodway management” https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/vpcthirteen/40/)

Outlaw killing of beaver.  Instead, attempt to resolve human-beaver conflicts or ensure their relocation to a habitable area.  

Modify land use and waterway laws to facilitate re-establishment and maintenance of beaver populations and coexistence of humans with beaver.  

Domesticate beaver to help install and support wild beaver populations.  

Develop novel land use and water management strategies and policies to optimize beaver-human ecologic mutualism.  

Establish harboring of beaver populations as a carbon offset.  

ALTERNATIVELY, if you like rapidly spreading wildfires, destructive flooding, and drought, then continue to ignore and deny the ecologically and economically critical role beavers could play in insulating humanity from these natural disasters.  

OTHER REFERENCES

Beaver: Nature's ecosystem engineers.  https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wat2.1494

Beaver-induced spatiotemporal patch dynamics affect landscape-level environmental heterogeneity.  https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab9924

https://www.resilientdesign.org/how-beavers-are-coming-to-the-rescue-in-an-age-of-climate-change/

https://pdf.wildearthguardians.org/site/DocServer/Beaver_and_Climate_Change_Final.pdf

Using Keystone Species for Restoration. https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/under_showcase_2020/60/

Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter.  Ben Goldfarb. 2018. Chelsea Green Publishing.  ISBN 978-1-60-358739-6.  

From being an engineer to researching nature’s engineers.  Faith Kearns. https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=41290

Prof. Emily Fairfax https://emilyfairfaxscience.com/

Beaver (Castor canadensis) mitigate the effects of climate on the area of open water in boreal wetlands in western Canada. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320707004557

Environmental impacts of beavers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impacts_of_beavers

Ecosystem engineers in the arctic. https://www.arcus.org/witness-the-arctic/2018/1/article/28400

The Busy, Beneficial Beaver https://daily.jstor.org/the-busy-beneficial-beaver/

Getting the Best from Beavers. https://www.cabdirect.org/cabdirect/abstract/20173168278

MORE ABOUT THIS WORK

These eight images together are essentially a pair of 2 x 2 mathematical matrices designed to illustrate the effect of presence vs. absence of beaver on fire and flood events in a headwater valley.  

Column one of each matrix is the same:  a headwater valley with vs. without beavers.  Column two imposes wildfire or flooding on the baseline conditions shown in column one.  Yes, the work could also have been a single 2 x 3 matrix, but that would deny the independent and disparate nature and impact of wildfires vs. floods.  

What about a third 2 x 2 matrix to illustrate drought?  You should do that one and send it to us!