You remember that beaver documentary on PBS in 2014?  It was on PBS titled “Leave it to beavers”. Well it originally aired in Canada as part of a series with David Suzuki under the title “The beaver whispers.”  You can’t watch it in America but I was allowed to preview the finished project on my computer the morning my father died in 2013. We were waiting for the things you wait for when your father dies and I remember thinking how strange it was because I knew the director’s father had died while making the documentary and her producer’s father had died also. So we were all in a country of mourning.

With Beavers.

David Suzuki: For healthy habitats, leave it to the beavers and other animal engineers

Beavers have long been considered nuisances. They knock down trees and block waterways, often flooding areas where humans live and gather. But recent moves to leave the beavers alone show they can enhance and restore natural environments.

Like other animals that create, modify, and maintain their environments, beavers are referred to as “ecosystem engineers”. In one study, scientists determined busy beavers improve ecosystem health, “increasing species richness at the landscape scale”.

They found that in New York state’s central Adirondacks, “ecosystem engineering by beaver leads to the formation of extensive wetland habitat capable of supporting herbaceous plant species not found elsewhere in the riparian zone”.

In Europe, many towns and municipalities are reintroducing beavers where they were previously wiped out. In Scotland, beavers were released into a 44-square-kilometre area in 2009 after a 400-year absence. The five-year trial’s success convinced the government to allow beavers to remain.

According to Wildlife Trusts, an organization instrumental in European rewildling efforts, beavers and the landscapes they generate benefit people and wildlife by helping to reduce downstream flooding—“the channels, dams, and wetland habitats that beavers create hold back water and release it more slowly after heavy rain”. They also reduce siltation, and the wetlands sequester carbon, an essential process for fighting the climate crisis.

Apparently Jari Osborne’s lesson stayed with David because he is still thinking and talking about the good things beavers can do.

In Vancouver, where I live, beavers in Stanley Park have created new wetland habitat and reduced invasive species like water lilies. (Some human intervention has been necessary, such as protecting a number of trees with wire mesh, and taking measures to ensure water levels are maintained.)

Beavers aren’t the only animals that engineer the worlds around them, often making them more viable for other creatures. Many do, which has led to efforts worldwide to reintroduce species to fulfil the roles they’ve historically played in maintaining healthy ecosystems.

In fact, one could argue that all animals play an active role in shaping the places in which they live, to varying degrees. Some, such as invasive zebra mussels, can negatively reshape ecosystems. (The human animal, of course, has engineered some of the worst impacts!)

Well sure spiders build webs and sea otters eat urchins that eat kelp but beavers are the BEST. Let’s be honest.

Engineering can take many different forms. The most obvious is structural engineering, in which creatures create or modify elements of their habitat. But, as Berke notes, engineers also modify chemical environments and even the levels of light entering a land or seascape. “In modifying light, plankton and filter feeders are analogous to those terrestrial organisms that cast shade, most if not all of which are structural engineers. In terrestrial systems, then, light engineering entirely overlaps with structural engineering, while in marine systems light is largely controlled by organisms that do not create structure.”

Ultimately, when we lose wildlife populations, we don’t only lose the animals themselves; we also lose the version of the world that was shaped, in part, by their agency. The result, like so many of our impacts, is less healthy, more monocultured ecosystems that reflect back only human enterprise.

Okay David. All ecoystem engineers are important and we should make way for them. But they aren’t all as important as this one.

Never complain again about beaver dams flooding the trails in the Sierras or the plains. This bright idea should render that argument moot forever.

New Floating Walkway For Pukaskwa National Park

The new Hattie Cove Wetland Walkway has opened at Pukaskwa National Park in northern Ontario thanks to a $540,000 ($417,000 USD) federal investment.

Connecting visitors to the park’s popular Suspension Bridge Trail and Coastal Hiking Trail, the walkway was officially reopened in June with a blessing and sharing of stories on the significance of the site by Biigtigong Knowledge Keeper Donald Michano, Biigtigong Nishnaabeg Chief Duncan Michano and Parks Canada team members.

Through the federal infrastructure investment program, Parks Canada replaced an old boardwalk with a new, more sustainable structure.

The new pre-fabricated floating walkway can move up and down with the changing water levels that occur with changing beaver activity in the wetland. Visitors can now keep their feet dry and avoid slips while allowing beavers to naturally maintain this important wetland.

Parks Canada said the replacement of this trail structure will enhance visitor experience, ensure ecological integrity is maintained and reduce maintenance requirements.

“The new marshland walkway will give the visitors and local residents from Biigtigong and Marathon the opportunity to observe and enjoy the abundant and diverse wildlife that thrives in these types of wetlands,” Duncan Mishano, chief of Biigtigong Nishnaabeg, said in a news release.

How smart is this? What a great long term solution that accounts for both the beavers AND the people! I am so impressed with their forward thinking.

Well maintained, accessible national parks help areas have more to offer as they grow their tourism sectors.

“Preserving natural environments is important for the health of our region and contributes to the joy we all feel when we think about Northern Ontario,” said Patty Hajdu, Minister of Indigenous Services, Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario and Member of Parliament for Thunder Bay—Superior North.

Spanning more than 1,878 square kilometres (725 square miles) on Lake Superior’s remote northern coast, Pukaskwa weaves untouched nature with the long history of the Anishinaabe people.

Ontario’s only wilderness national park boasts pink-and-slate granite shores and near endless stretches of spruce, fir, pine and hardwoods. The biodiverse coastal regions — where wetland, lake and forest meet — are home to many iconic Canadian species and species at risk.

The Government of Canada is investing more than $11 million ($8.5 million USD) dollars to support infrastructure work in Pukaskwa and close to $27 million ($20 million USD) for national parks and national historic sites throughout Northern Ontario, as part of the largest federal infrastructure plan in the history of Parks Canada.

Better trails mean less repairs, more beavers mean more wildlife, more wildlife means more hikers, more hikers means more tourists, and it all means more tourist dollars. Congratulations Canada. You really outdid yourself on this one.