Today Zane Eddy defends his masters thesis on the Martinez Beavers, and the academic world find out whether urban beavers matter. I of course will be tuning in like a ghost attending her own funeral. I just have to know how (if) it ends!
Meanwhile Washington is spending money on beavers again, and we should all follow suit.
King County’s culvert hunters — and a $9 billion plan to save salmon habitat
It doesn’t look like much, this ditch by the side of the road. But to King County’s culvert hunters, this isn’t a throwaway landscape.
Kat Krohn, an engineer and fish passage specialist for King County, chopped right into a fierce bramble of blackberries and got into the ditch as traffic roared by on a busy thoroughfare in Lake Forest Park. Here, Lyon Creek flows through Lake Forest Park before draining into the northwest corner of Lake Washington, crossing in culverts under roads and even private driveways all along the way.
That’s where Krohn and her teammates at King County come in. They are working in the field to compile an inventory of culverts on country roads, bridges and properties — the good, the bad, and the truly ugly in terms of whether a salmon can get through them to spawn or journey to the sea.
Urban creeks are the arteries and veins of the region carrying the lifeblood that animates the region’s ecology: salmon. Food for more than 123 species of animals — including endangered southern resident killer whales that frequent Puget Sound.
Imagine checking EVERY culvert in the county to see if fish can get by safely. Salmon are practically treated like royalty in Washington State. And guess what helps the royal family most?
A beaver dam attested to the help from nature’s primo wetland engineer, noted Jen Vanderhoof, a senior ecologist at King County working to support the coexistence of beavers in the watershed. Beavers can help boost biodiversity in a creek like this, Vanderhoof said, which is challenged by the effects of development, including both elevated temperature and pollutants.
The dams beavers build create pools that benefit baby salmon, and grow the insects and invertebrates that feed everything from fish to birds. Pools created by their beaver busyness also help recharge the hyporheic zone of the creek — where the water flows unseen, underground — maintaining flow and cooling temperature.
“Let the rodents do the work,” Vanderhoof said.
Not a wisecrack, but an insight, to not just treat symptoms, but instead restore natural processes that create healthier habitat and cleaner water in this creek. It is an important county stronghold for wildlife, home to not only coho, sockeye and Chinook, but freshwater mussels and sponges, river otters, crayfish and a teeming community of aquatic insects that stoke a web of life.
Who knew such things went on in urban streams and culverts! Wow you could almost write your master’s thesis on it!
I don’t know. Beavers might not be inspiring enough. What do you think? This photo of a beaver dam before the grand Tetons was sent by a friend of Rusty Cohn.
