Felicia!

Back in March I read about these smart scientists at Stanford working to understand groundwater recharge. I commented then how they neglected to mention beavers and wrote several of them privately about the upcoming beaver conference. One of them even enrolled.

I was told by beaver buddy Ann Riley that Felicia Marcus was an old friend and someone good to have on our side. Now I see why.

Confronting Drought With the Tools of Nature

There are successful models for leveraging natural systems to improve water quality and supplies, enhance biodiversity and blunt the ravages of wildfires. There’s even something we can learn from beavers.

The ongoing drought in the West has dramatically impacted the health, well-being and livelihoods of millions of the region’s residents, from farmers in Colorado struggling to sustain their crops to Californians who have lost their homes to wildfire. The new federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provides substantial funding, including $8.3 billion for water-related programs in the West, to begin to mitigate and adapt to our drying climate. But achieving the scale of impact needed requires a willingness to prioritize investments in nature-based solutions that protect, restore and sustainably manage existing water systems. (more…)