The internet is a big sandbox, and when I play in it I tend to share other kids toys without asking. Technically, I hate when people use our photos without permission, but we almost always say ‘yes’ when we are asked. (And we are asked a lot.) The number one reason I’m possessive is just that I think anyone could get wonderful photos of their own if they just worked on coexisting with beaver in their own neighborhoods. They wouldn’t need to steal OUR photos if they just learned how to stop killing beavers.
But when I do something criminal to copyright law myself, (and I do it a lot) I prefer to think of it as “Quilting“. Putting existing fabric together in new artful ways to create a finished piece that is warmly useful and belongs to the quilter. I say this in preference to the product of my greatest copyright-violating-quilt yet. Yes, these are images I hunted for and stole out of the ‘sandbox’. Yes, the quote is from the recent BBC earth article and not original. I didn’t make the font either. But isn’t it beautiful?
Sometimes folks get the details all wrong and still end up with a right answer. This article from XARALITE is one such case: they clearly dashed off this glowing piece after reading three paragraphs of the BBC Earth article without bothering to learn that this has nothing to do with the Scottish beaver trials and that these particular beavers were in fences. Well, credit for getting the theme – if not the facts.
Four hundred years have passed since Britain was last home to beavers, but in 2011, the Eurasian beaver was reintroduced and now the area they’ve returned to is flourishing. In Devon lies the United Kingdom’s only beaver population; low trees and open plains provide the perfect home for the country’s largest rodents.
Prior to reintroducing the Eurasian Beaver to Britain, trials were held in Scotland to see how the beavers would cope and how they would impact the national landscape. Whilst carrying out the trials, it was found that introducing beavers would be a great way to create and maintain natural habitats. Their dams hold great bodies of water, incredibly useful for other animals too during periods of drought. Their creations also aid the quality of water and prevent flooding by holding back silt, preventing it from travelling into and disturbing other water bodies.
You know how sometimes in archeology they describe finding a fragment and make inferences about the larger artifact it represented? Like bone or pottery? Well. I’d call this an ‘article fragment’ because it literally reads like the author was attacked by bears in the middle of a sentence and couldn’t complete the thougt. But for a brief moment it gets the central idea across: Beavers make and sustain habitat.
Period. End of sentence.
Now here’s a beaver enjoying the habitat in Martinez made available to him or her by our friends at Mountain View Sanitation . They are using night cameras to track the otter population for the river otter folk but a couple nights ago they got something even better. This is not one of the local beavers in Alhambra Creek.
MVSD is just on the other side of 680 and a fairly circuitous water route up an inlet from the Carquinez strait. Our original beavers were likely the progeny of theirs, at least our original mom who was the only one to ever build and maintain a formal lodge like the ones they boasted in the middle of the ponds out there. Maybe this is a distant cousin or a grand niece or something.
Thanks to Kelly Davidson who shared it with us and gave me permission to post it here!
William Hughes-Games is a scholar and organic farmer in New Zealand who happens to be very interested in beavers. Years ago he read about Worth A Dam in the Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife newsletter, and we became buddies online. He also maintains a smart blog about climate change and other things, most recently about beavers and their value on the watershed. He’s far more thorough than I am so I’ll just post highlights and encourage you to go read the entire thing. You’ll be much smarter because of it.
A couple of beavers ‘appeared’ in the Otter River, on the South Coast of England in Devon. This has resulted in three breeding pairs at present (Sept 2016). In a great move, the Powers-that-be have allowed the introduction of a second pair further up in the catchment so that when the two populations meet, there will be greater genetic diversity in the united populations.
Beavers do so much good for the environment and for an individual farm that you may desire to encourage them to create a pond on your farm or in the head waters of your catchment. The only way you can increase the beaver population is by making new areas attractive to them. The best way is to truncheoning in a new forest of deciduous trees on the banks of a stream). Tiny seeps that hardly deserve the name of a stream can be occupied by beavers if the habitat is provided for them. Let’s catalog the benefits from beavers.
Water flow regulation Beavers store water on the land in a number of ways. This is particularly important in the catchment of the Otter. The underlying strata is mainly sandstone and water doesn’t infiltrate the aquifer quickly, unlike outwash plains such as the ones found East of the Rockie Mountains in the USA or to the East of the Alps in the south island of New Zealand. In the Otterton, most of the water from high rainfall events shoots down to the sea in a day or two. Of course, if these are unusually high rainfall events, they cause flooding. So how do beavers store water.
First, of course, are the ponds they create with their dams. Depending on the topography of the particular area where they build their dams, they can store considerable water. Beaver dams are somewhat leaky so some water is leaked downstream and water also seeps downward into the underlying strata. holding the water on the land allows time for the water to infiltrate the ‘reluctant’ aquifer.
Secondly, the ponds raise the water table in the surrounding land. Water tables intersect streams at the surface of the water in the stream. As the water rises in a beaver dam, the surrounding water table rises as well. In particularly propitious cases, a field which had to be irrigated, now doesn’t need it since the field crops can access the underlying water table. Water then leaks back into the stream, down steam from the beaver dam.
He has lots more to say about sediment load and fish populations of course, and has wished more than once over the years that NZ had beavers. William traveled to Canada to meet Eric Collier’s son and to the UK to meet Louise and Paul Ramsay and Derek Gow. He’s a very interesting fellow who studied marinology in Israel and takes “WOOFERS” to maintain is farm (Willing Workers On Organic Farms). Go read his entire article and say hi. You won’t regret it.
As I mentioned, in all of this, the rest of England is going to be playing catch up. Hopefully, a really intense research program will document the effects of beaver dams as they become established throughout the Otter catchment. This will be the body of work that other catchments can point to to convince the uninformed of the benefit of the return of the beaver.
In the end it depends on the people in the Otter catchment. If they establish favorable habitats for the Beavers, the beavers will return the favor with interest. If they avoid harming the beavers, the beavers will repay the favor with interest.
And ain’t that the truth! Thanks William.
I laughed to hear the Russian Charity beaver story on “Wait Wait don’t tell me” yesterday. Enjoy this short clip from the lightening round.
And a final comment on our current complex political system:
And so it goes. The day after the BBC published the best articlec in the history of the world on why to keep beavers , the Telegraph ran this charming piece.
After being extinct in the UK for centuries, the recent reintroduction of beavers into English wildlife was celebrated as a “change in our relationship with the natural world”.
But now an eccentric baronet has threatened to scupper the £750,000 plans by posting a £1,000 ‘dead or alive’ reward for beavers he claims are ruining trees on his estate.
Sir Benjamin Slade, who owns Woodlands Castle, a 17th century house within 12 acres of private parkland in Somerset, says the animals are committing “crimes against trees” and breed “like rabbits”.
What a fine example of British stewardship! No beaver has chewed a tree on that land since 100 years before the castle was built, but rather than greet this return with the awed joy it occasions he wants to pay someone to shoot it for him. Because that’s what rich people do in England, I guess. After buying the outfit, of course.
A colony has subsequently been established in the River Otter in Devon, from where it is believed the beavers on Sir Benjamin’s land may have migrated to the nearby River Tone.
A spokesman for the Devon Wildlife Trust told the Telegraph the five-year plan could cost up to £750,000.
The Trust’s Steve Hussey said: “We would like to make contact with the landowner to see if we can come to another solution that does not involve killing beavers.
“It is true that beavers will cut down some trees but they are not going to fell forests or woodlands or anything like that. You can take very easy straightforward protective measures to stop beavers felling trees.”
Ahh but where’s the fun in that? I mean wrapping trees isn’t NEARLY as cool as shooting beavers. Or pretending to shoot them. But Hurray for that brave little disperser slipping up the river Ptter to try out life on the river Tone. He’s got 500 years to make up for!
Now of course there’s a poll and you NEED to vote because at the moment the assholes in funny clothes are winning. Since I already voted I can’t tell if this link is active anymore, but if its not click on the article and scroll down.
“You get people shouting about how beavers are wonderful,” he said. “But they are not. They are a nuisance.
“They eat the trees and strip them of their bark. They’re not endangered. They are endemic. They breed like rabbits and are all over Europe. They put bite marks everywhere, it’s just terrible. The trouble is that if you chase them they disappear under the water and you can’t get them.”
The 70-year-old, who made his fortune as a shipping magnate, has no children and has previously said he would bequeath the Maunsel House estate to whichever stranger most closely matches his DNA, provided they were not Guardian readers, communists or drug users. He has frozen his sperm and still hopes to father a child.
Well, well, well. How very sorry are we that your stock will die out in a few years. That is unless any of you ladies are tempted by is spermscicle. Apparently the castle is rented out for weddings and corporate parties. You know the sort. Let’s hope this round of advertising has a very decidedly negative effect on business.
Too bad. Because Beavers Mate for Life. It could be a theme you know. Ecotourism with a little pagan good luck charm thrown in.
What am I saying? You’re obviously an idiot and incapable of learning new things. Tell me this though, I’m dimly curious. Why would a hunter in green rainy somerset need desert camouflage?
I’m going to share something fine and rare, like a glass of the extraordinary 1811 Château d’Yquem. And your job is to snif the boquet, hold it up to the light, and slowly savor every amber moment. Do not guzzle this down and look for the next article or the one after that. This is the best article.
On a June morning with a thin cover of cloud above, I was here [in Devon] to meet Richard Brazier, an environmental scientist from University of Exeter, and his post-doctoral colleague Alan Puttock. They are running a one-of-a-kind outdoor experiment.
Today, things have changed. The undergrowth is overgrown. Lopsided willow trees dominate, sending hundreds of shoots and stems into the air, each pining for the light above. A thick blanket of green foliage erupts from the peaty soil. Flora is blossoming, fauna flourishing. With their long cascade of pink bells, foxgloves rise high from the purple moor grass below. Butterflies and bees flutter from flower to flower.
“The biodiversity is booming,” Brazier tells me as we approach the wire fence through a field of coarse grass and rushes. “It’s alive.”
Behind this fence, every species – plant and animal– depends on the behaviour of just one: the Eurasian beaver. Since their introduction in March 2011, a breeding pair of these large rodents has been as busy as, well, beavers.
They have raised a family. They have built a lodge to live in and gouged deep canals through the land for getting out and about. And, of course, they have chopped down trees and built a series of 13 dams from sticks and mud. The woodland stream has been, and is being, transmogrified into wetland.
It is easy to see why beaver are known as “ecosystem engineers”. But it is Brazier and Puttock’s task to find out what these large rodents are engineering exactly.
“When this animal existed in the tens of millions in Western Europe and Eurasia, it was a dominant landscape force, in the way that wind and water and fire are,” says Derek Gow, a beaver and water vole consultant from Devon.”
Honestly, this was such flowing beatitudes and well-written prose that I honestly paused and thanked the lucky stars that England has been unreasonable as long as it has. Where else would we possibly get such persuasive and well crafted descriptions if it wasn’t for the stubborn bureaucrats who required endless persuasion? Take this section about coppicing for instance.
The homebody beavers are instead content to gnaw on willow trees from dusk until dawn, within the confines they have been allocated. By coppicing these trees, beavers promote new shoots to form on old trees.
It is an old relationship. Humans have been coppicing willow for 8,000 years in the UK, but beavers have been doing it for around 10 million years.
Not only does the willow get a new lease of life, but beavers benefit too. When placed within their dams, willow shoots continue to grow, creating a natural and self-reinforcing building material.
Ahh. Just imagine what the scarred earth would look like if beavers were allowed to work their magic in peace?
“Where water would travel 180m in tens of seconds at maximum velocities, now you’ve got a situation where that water’s taking hours if not days to move through this site,” says Brazier. “And it can only be attributed to these dams.”
Beavers dampen any hydrological extremes, reducing the peak flow of water and making it stay longer in the
area. In contrast, the drainage ditches that line the surrounding fields sweep rainfall downstream in a flash.
Flooding occurs. Water from headwaters accumulates quickly when the land levels off, not only breaking the banks of rivers but also the bank accounts of many homeowners. The infamous UK floods of 2007, for instance, caused an estimated £6 billion of damage.
Beaver can help, Brazier says. By slowing the flow – while storing 650,000 litres of water behind each dam – these mammals are a natural method of flood prevention, before the flood has even started. They can protect our homes, by building their own.
And by mastering the art of imperfect engineering, beavers also stem downstream droughts. The dams are not watertight. Water is slowed and stored, yes, but it is not stationary and made stagnant. “It’s so slow,” says Brazier, as he points out how each pond is a metre lower than the one before. “It’s like a big escalator staircase with water gently moving through.”
Are you imagining? I sure am. What if our dry California creeks were moistened by beavers and the flashy overflowing paths of the east coast storms were slowed by beaver dams. The country would be a different place entirely, and the wrath of climate change would be less drastic.
“The more you look at beavers, the more you understand the other species that exist in the habitats they create,” adds Gow. “Beavers are basically the generators of life.”
A beaver is not just an animal. It is an ecosystem.
Aaand SCENE!
In ten years of writing about beaver writing that is the single finest sentence I have ever read. Thank you, Mr. Riley for defining a movement with your pen. My clipping an snipping doesn’t come close to doing the piece justice so make sure you head over to read the original right now and send it to everyone you know because its THAT good.
And when its all finished go read it again because there are lovely uppercuts to the fishermen and references to the new Bridge Creek study as well. Mr. Riley did his homework, and we all get the benefit.
A
ence, every species – plant and animal– depends on the behaviour of just one: the 
p, Brazier says. By slowing the flow – while storing 650,000 litres of water behind each dam – these mammals are a natural method of flood prevention, before the flood has even started. They can protect our homes, by building their own.
