We have been spoiled for choice this year in beaver central. There have been so many alarmingly positive beaver stories because of the ripples cast by Ben’s book that I often decide to write about them instead of the same old story of beavers plugging the pipe in farmer john’s field or whatever. I just can’t bring myself to write about the same old bad news when there’s such FANTASTIC news waiting in the wings.
Carpe castor diem, I say.
Sometimes the wonderful news is disguised. It’s wrapped up in packaging that pretends to be about something else entirely. But if you hold it to the faintest light source you can see the beaver outline clearly between the lines. We call these “secret beaver articles”. And yesterday’s was a doozy. 
What the world needs now to fight climate change: More swamps
“Drain the swamp” has long meant getting rid of something distasteful. Actually, the world needs more swamps – and bogs, fens, marshes and other types of wetlands.
These are some of the most diverse and productive ecosystems on Earth. They also are underrated but irreplaceable tools for slowing the pace of climate change and protecting our communities from storms and flooding.
Scientists widely recognize that wetlands are extremely efficient at pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and converting it into living plants and carbon-rich soil. As part of a transdisciplinary team of nine wetland and climate scientists, we published a paper earlier this year that documents the multiple climate benefits provided by all types of wetlands, and their need for protection.
You can see where I’m going with this, right?
Wetlands continuously remove and store atmospheric carbon. Plants take it out of the atmosphere and convert it into plant tissue, and ultimately into soil when they die and decompose. At the same time, microbes in wetland soils release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as they consume organic matter.
Natural wetlands typically absorb more carbon than they release. But as the climate warms wetland soils, microbial metabolism increases, releasing additional greenhouse gases. In addition, draining or disturbing wetlands can release soil carbon very rapidly.
For these reasons, it is essential to protect natural, undisturbed wetlands. Wetland soil carbon, accumulated over millennia and now being released to the atmosphere at an accelerating pace, cannot be regained within the next few decades, which are a critical window for addressing climate change. In some types of wetlands, it can take decades to millennia to develop soil conditions that support net carbon accumulation. Other types, such as new saltwater wetlands, can rapidly start accumulating carbon.
Or put another way, any UN-TRAPPED beaver TRAPS CARBON. How’s that for incentive? Certainly it’s easier to do than riding your bicycle to the office or giving up your iPhone. When are people going to realize that the list of problems beavers can help solve is quite a bit longer than the list of problems they might cause?
