The Mendenhall Glacier beaver cam is back. Some years it has frozen and some years it has worked like a charm but it’s great to have it working again, and just in time for kits to be thinking about being born. If it was a Martinez lodge cam the would be born already but I imagine in Juneau we have a couple months yet to go. Still you should be able to see some nice grooming and sleeping.

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It must be the air, because our own Walnut Creek born beaver researcher appeared in phys.org this week. Along with a photo of a nutria I might add. She says she provided a real one which they chose not to use and she told them of the error to no avail. Their loss.

Nature must be a partner, not just a provider of services

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) could support transformative change in environmental sustainability—to address major societal challenges, including the climate crisis—according to a new paper from Oxford researchers.
But, the team warns, there must be a move away from the narrow framing of what nature can ‘do’ for society to an integrated approach, where solutions are understood as place-based, activated by people in partnership with nature.

This issue has real world implications for the way nature becomes an integrated part of the response to environmental challenges. For example, positioning the action of tree planting as simply a way to mitigate climate change, rather than a dynamic relationship between people and nature,

Well sure, we want people to let beaver do their own thing, but honestly if people selfishly use beavers to serve their own environmental purposes, its still better than trapping them.

Co-author Annie Welden says, “NbS are often framed as nature working for people but, by recognising human well-being and nature as intertwined, the concept of NbS can support a transformation of human relations with nature. Rather than seeing ourselves apart from nature, we need to see ourselves as a part of it.”

She adds, “The reframing moves away from us seeing nature as solely providing goods and services.”

Annie Annie Annie! I always knew to expect great things from you! Ever since that first day when you sat at my dining table and told me you were bound for Oxford. We need plenty of beaver researchers in Oxford, don’t you agree?

In the case of beaver-assisted restoration, she says, people may work with beavers on the restoration, rather than controlling them. The beavers, who are best placed to deliver sustainable results, are left to make positive changes in the landscape, so the project may be successfully achieved for people and nature, with limited human intervention.

Well I won’t disagree. I just say whether the human is directing the beaver, or the beaver is directing themselves, its going to be better for them both.

New article just published says that nature-based solutions are the most effective, but we’ll talked about that tomorrow!