Things seem out of control with my keyboard this morning. It is better for us all I type very little until peace is restored. I will just leave you with this photo recently taken from Shocken Hill in Sonoma. You know, in the state that Joseph Grinnell wrote didn’t have beavers.
“Beaver have recently been caught within half a mile of the mission”
Sir George Simpson Hudson Bay Company 1842
You know what they say. Not everything is about money unless you don’t have any and then EVERYTHING is. Let’s hope this new study out of Ontario will turn some heads. Thank you Bob Kobres of Georgia for alerting me to it.
Southern Ontario wetlands provide $4.2 billion worth of sediment filtration and phosphorus removal services each year, keeping our drinking water sources clean and helping to mitigate harmful and nuisance algal blooms in our lakes and rivers.
A new study from the University of Waterloo uses economic valuation to help us understand the importance of Southern Ontario’s wetlands for water filtration—particularly as these sensitive ecosystems continue to be lost by conversion to agriculture or urban development.
“Wetlands naturally filter out phosphorus and sediments from water, but their value is often greatly overlooked,” said Tariq Aziz, who carried out the study during his Ph.D. and postdoctoral work in Waterloo’s Department of Earth and Environmental Science. “By calculating the economic value of wetland filtration and comparing it to the costs of engineered interventions, we hope to reinforce the importance of protecting our wetlands.” (more…)
Somedays I straggle to the computer half awake and blearily look at the beaver headlines and feel so glum about the future. And some days are glorious beyond my imagining. This is a GLORIOUS day, Get ready to be gloried.
Scott McGill was standing beside a stream that, to many people, wouldn’t look like a stream at all. But if an explorer had been plopped down here four centuries ago, in what is now Baltimore County, MD, this is the way a stream might have looked, he said.
This section of Long Green Creek is a sprawling ponded area of 7 or 8 acres, surrounded by shrubs and trees and flanked by marshy soil that sank with each step. Muddy, vegetated mounds occasionally pierced the surface.
Wildlife, especially waterfowl, like it that way. “We have flocks of black ducks and woodies,” said McGill, who heads Ecotone, an ecological restoration company that has been working on this stretch of stream for years. “We’ve even had pintails, which typically aren’t common around here.” (more…)
I can count on one hand the articles I’ve read celebrating the return of beavers in their neighborhood. That might be exaggeration. Maybe I can count them on one finger. So this was a delight to see from Illinois this morning.
HANNIBAL — Beavers are reportedly back in a section of Bear Creek that is located on the eastern edge of Hannibal. Thus far the creatures have not caught the attention of city hall.
“I will have to do some checking to see what is going on. No one had alerted me to this issue,” said Andy Dorian, the city’s director of central services.
Based on recent history a report of beavers being spotted in the local waterway did not come as a huge surprise to Dorian.
“We dealt with some beaver issues last year in the creek adjacent to our warehouse that General Mills leased from us, but we did not do any trapping in that case,” he said.
See now that seems like it’s getting ready for a fight. That man is putting his dukes up. You can forgive my surprise at the next paragraph when you think of what every other city means when they say they “dealt with beaver issues in the past”.
It’s usually not good.
While one might expect the return of the tree-gnawing animals to be a concern of the Hannibal Tree Board, that is not the case.
“The beavers are back and I am so happy,” said Kristy Trevathan, president of the tree board during its January meeting.
I’m writing Kristy this very moment. A woman who’s happy to see beavers is a friend of mine. I’ll make sure she has all the info she needs just in case. Near as I can tell Kristy is a real estate agent in Hannibal MO that has been doing great tree work for a long time. She seems just the right type of woman for beavers to befriend.
Hey you know what other city was also awarded the tree-city USA standard? Martinez…just saying.
I cannot tell you how many media outlets have recently sent me an alert with the headline “Beavers offer lessons about managing water in a changing climate,” Most recently it was picked up by phys,org. It will be the best beaver news delivered in January for sure, One of the many sites that ran it shared this photo that I thought was beautiful. Let it continue to dominate the beaver news cycle a little longer, I’m sure we’ll get back to them melting the arctic soon.
