What if you wanted were a clever author who prided himself on saying things in such a novel way that folks were forced to think of your topic in an entirely new light? Let’s say you wanted to talk about the economy and how the wealthy keep taking our cream off the top in a way that can’t possibly last. You wanted a compelling metaphor for unending selfishness and ruthless destruction so you picked the only obvious choice.
Take for example the beaver. These little creatures are extremely unsustainable. Once they find a mate and an occupy a creek, tributary or stream, they get to work building a dam and lodge. To do this, they must saw down all available trees within close proximity to their home. Within a season or two, the surrounding landscape looks like a tornado hit it. A stand of forest is reduced to a collection of stumps. A beaver family will turn vibrant riverine habitat with healthy banks, fish runs, and flora in to a flooded plan for their pond. This level of destruction has been found to cause local extinction of some plant species dependent on riverbanks.
Yes, those little ecosystem destroyers! Thank goodness Neil Chambers has the courage to lay bare their chomping wilderness-crushing ways! Remember the barren wasteland the landscape had become after 60,000,000 of those little creatures had tromped all over our pristine shores before we came on the scene. Obviously, left to their own devices, the country was a lunar tundra. Thank goodness all those trappers cleaned up the problem and made space for us to build cities!
His desolate photo looked a little suspicious to me. Why are none of those trees coppicing? Why is their no new growth in that photo? I went to look around for the original. And found a lovely mountain range that looked very familiar.
The Cordillera Darwin consists of several parallel west-to-east trending ranges. The rocks are predominantly Mesozoic quartzites, slates, phyllites, and low-grade schists. Each range is flanked by broad glacial valleys that developed along a series of left-lateral strike-slip faults. The faults mark former plate boundaries between the South American and Scotia plates. The introduction of the north American beaver, Castor canadiensis, has caused considerable destruction to the ambient environment.
Patagonia. Tierra del Fuego. The author had to scour the most remote reaches of South America to find the remnants of the get-rich-quick scheme that went awry when beavers were loosed upon the land by some Argentine tycoon in the 40’s. Turns out most of the trees in South America don’t ‘coppice’. So no new shoots. And trees that are cut stay cut, which is bad for the beavers, and bad for the countryside, and rotten for arguments.
To say that beavers are unsustainable because they are killing trees in Pantagonia is like saying Ben and Jerry’s is a failed product because no one is buying it on the African plains. Is the region ready for your produce? Does it have refrigeration or trees that coppice for example? But Neil had a point to make, and didn’t much care about the accuracy of his metaphor.
Though they are extremely unsustainable, beavers are also keystone species. In their destruction, they create new niches, and are essential into the changing dynamic of forests. Biodiversity springs anew from their actions. In fact, they are so joined to the bionetwork, they contribute to its overall health. They seem to have no problem being unsustainable either… no initiatives to conserve trees or remit dam construction. No efforts to recycle branches, twigs or bark. They do what they do without shame or remorse. They are both unsustainable and the underpinning of biological life.
I cannot even imagine the conversation two competent ecologists would have about this paragraph: An unsustainable keystone species? A species that makes habitat for something else just before it commits dramatic suicide? Just so we are clear, beaver chewed trees in North America, like willow and aspen and birch, sprout and regrow. It is a green renewal and it is lovely to see. In fact there is even a fantastic article about it from our friends at the river Tay today in Scotland.
“After all, we know that beavers cut down trees. Most of the trees that beavers cut are willow trees and the like, near water, and they will generally coppice or sucker abundantly the following spring. In fact some people think that beaver saliva may contain some growth promoter as beaver cut seems to regrow particularly well. The short bushy vegetation that grows next to water in the presence of beavers is good for stabilising riverbanks and is excellent habitat and fodder for numerous species.
Go Louise! What a range! from beavers as a laser beam of ecological destruction to beavers regrowing trees with their magic spit all in the same day! (For the record birds nest soup has magic spit in it, beaver saliva probably does not.)
Honestly, I can’t believe this dodgy article got published in any magazine. Doesn’t everyone know by now that beavers create wetlands and restore habitat? What backwards nature-phobic prehistoric journal printed this anyway?
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I am beyond stunned to find this bio on the treehugger website:
Neil Chambers – Contributing Writer, Design / New York, NY
Neil Chambers is an award-winning green designer and founder of Chambers Design, Inc and Green Ground Zero. He was named one of Tonic.com 50 Most Beautiful People Saving the World. In July 2011, his first book came out entitled Urban Green: Architecture for the Future, published by Palgrave|MacMillian, which reached #1 on the Amazon Kindle eBooks list for Land-Use and Urban Planning books. Passionate about cities, buildings, healthcare, habitat, infrastructure, biodiversity and ecosystems, his professional work drives to interconnect these areas into what he calls ecomimicry. He is a National fellow with the Environmental Leadership Program and has taught at New York University as well as the Fashion Institute of Technology. During his national book tour, he visited more than 20 universities throughout the southeast, west coast and northeast of the United States. He has been featured in Architectural Record, Guernica Magazine, Eco_Design Magazine, Civil Engineering, Vogue Italia, BBC News, Fox News, Grist.org, the Economist and other media outlets. When not designing green hospitals, restoring habitat, writing for treehugger.com or lecturing about the future of sustainability, Neil loves to run, swim, bike and hang out with his wife Lucy and son Thunder.
Letters to write. Must dash.
Heidi Perryman, Ph.D., is a child psychologist with a private practice in Lafayette. She is also a board member of the John Muir Association at the National Historic Site in Martinez and became an accidental beaver advocate when she started filming the Martinez beavers in 2006. She started the organization “Worth A Dam” to manage their continued care and educate others about their value in the watershed. She has been particularly interested in the way that the beavers’ struggle has connected residents more closely to their environment, to their city government and to each other.
