There’s a smart new article in the Reflector about landowners coexisting with beavers. Which is worth focusing on but I’m more interested in the resource it casually sites which says it was published last year but certainly can’t be more than a month on the market. Check it out.

Do I have your interest now? How about when you read the ES?

Executive Summary

Stream and riparian ecosystems provide critical resources and services for the residents of Washington state but are increasingly threatened by climate change. Climate change is projected to increase stream temperatures, reduce summer streamflows, and increase wet-season flood events. These changes are expected to have negative consequences for many species, including protected species of salmon, trout, and amphibians.

Beavers were once abundant in North America. Though they were hunted nearly to extinction in the 18th and 19th centuries, populations have since recovered in many areas. Beaver-related restoration, which includes beaver reintroduction and the construction of structures that mimic beaver dams, seeks to facilitate the ongoing recovery of beavers and harness (or mimic) their engineering capabilities to restore and improve freshwater systems. Beaver-related restoration has gained popularity in recent years as a nature-based approach to facilitating climate resilience in stream and riparian ecosystems.

Both beaver reintroduction and the construction of beaver dam analogues are increasing in Washington State. However, there is a paucity of scientific information on the impacts of these forms of beaver-related restoration. This report synthesizes available scientific information on beaver-related restoration and climate resilience for streams in Washington state, summarizing the state of the science, highlighting knowledge gaps, and identifying challenges.

There is substantial evidence that beaver-related restoration, via beaver translocation and the construction of beaver dam analogues, has the potential to increase the climate resiliency of Washington’s stream and riparian ecosystems (summarized in Table 1). By reducing summer water temperatures, increasing summer flows, and enhancing floodplain habitat, beavers and beaver-related restoration can benefit species of conservation concern, including trout, salmon, and amphibians. In addition, beaver-related restoration can ameliorate the negative impacts of high-flow events, create fire-resistant habitat patches in fire-prone landscapes, and foster heterogeneous mosaics of habitat that enhance the watershed-level biodiversity of aquatic and riparian ecosystems. However, these benefits are only likely to accrue under certain conditions, and there is a gap between our understanding of the aspirational potential of beaver-related restoration (what it can accomplish) and the realized benefits of restoration actions (what it does accomplish).

While the scientific literature on beaver-related restoration is developing rapidly, there are important limitations in our understanding. For example, most studies of beaver-related restoration are still relatively limited in spatial and temporal scope. In addition, key aspects of restoration practice are not well understood — many translocated beavers do not establish; beaver dam analogs must be colonized by beavers or maintained by humans to persist, but it is not clear how frequently this happens. Finally, key drivers of variation in the effects of beavers and beaver-related restoration are poorly understood, including regional gradients in climate and land use.

The table of contents makes me literally tremble with anticipation. You can download the whole thing yourself  on this page or you can peruse it here:

Every once in a while an article drops that is so alarming it earns all of my attention for a full 24 hours. Like this one did,

Wildlife and ag: ‘Pheasants and beavers and deer, oh my!’

Columnist Jonathan Knutson expounds on the variety of wildlife that frequent farmlands and the reactions they get by different property owners.

Ambivalence means having mixed views or feelings on a given issue or topic. It’s the perfect word to describe how many upper Midwest agriculturalists feel about wildlife.

As a general rule, most of us enjoy having some wildlife, or at least some species of wildlife, in and above our fields, pasture and farmsteads. It’s a connection to nature that can enrich and satisfy. I think of the first time I saw a bald eagle, its habitat greatly expanded, flying majestically above my family’s farmland. (The image lost a little luster when I realized the eagle was swooping down to eat the guts of a deer we’d just shot and gutted, though the sight of the eagle was pretty cool nonetheless.)

But the enjoyability of having wildlife around can vary greatly depending on both the type of animal and the individual priorities and personality of an agriculturalist. Some types of wildlife are just more likeable, for lack of a better word,  and some agriculturalists just enjoy wildlife more than their neighbors.

At the risk of overgeneralization, I think most wildlife, from an ag perspective, falls into three main categories: the really likeable, the really unlikeable and ones that are simultaneously both. There will be disagreement about which types of wildlife belong in the differing categories, but the basic concept seems sound to me.

Guess what species of wildlife he finds intolerable? Go ahead, guess.

Beavers are the “bad” type of wildlife that I personally detest the most. They’ve destroyed countless trees in and near the portion of North Dakota’s Sheyenne River Valley where I grew up and subsequently have spent big chunks of my life. I’ve driven literally thousands of times past beautiful trees, especially oak, that they’ve ruined. Yeah, I’m  a tree guy and probably overvalue those ruined trees, but to me, they’re far more important than the so-called “nature’s engineers.” And I’m not the only person who feels that way.

Did you guess right? See he likes pheasants cuz hunters like to shoot them  and deer for the same reasons but beavers are just a pain in the oak tree. You know its true.

Most controversial are types of wildlife that bring obvious enjoyment and obvious damage. Deer, it seems to me, are easily the most outstanding example. Hunting them (which I’ve done for 50 years) can be a lot of fun. So is spying a big-antlered buck or watching a doe and her tiny fawn. On the other hand, the damage done by deer to growing crops and haystacks is aggravating and financially painful.

I don’t know what’s the right and proper role of wildlife in ag. Nobody else does, either. Opinions and priorities vary so greatly that a one-size-fits-all answer is impossible. But there’s one thing I am sure of: I could do with a lot fewer blackbirds, coyotes and especially those accursed beavers.

I‘m sure you know that those oak trees weren’t the beavers first or even second choice for supper. They would have preferred all that scrub brush that you ripped off the landscape months ago, You know the willows. they’ll  eat oak if they have to but it’s not tasty. Next time try leaving some undergrowth for them to browse and wrapping the trees you love with welded wire. Make sure the wire goes higher than the snowline.

Then maybe you’ll have some free time to read the articles about nitrogen removal and beaver dams offering flood and fire protection. Or maybe the article that says beaver dams retain nine times more water than equivalent area without beaver even during drought. I’m pretty sure that AG needs water.

Then we can chat,