Another nice report about beavers and fire, this one from Wyoming.

As wildfires get more intense, researchers say beavers have a role to play in confronting the crisis

Black coffee and a croissant was Emily Fairfax’s order. She’s an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota’s Geography, Environment and Society department, and a leading scholar on the relationship between beaver-dammed riverscapes and wildfire.

The team piled into a rental SUV and headed southwest toward the Colorado border. In 2020, the Mullen Fire burned nearly 180,000 acres on both sides of the state line.

“Within this fire scar, there are about a thousand satellite-visible beaver ponds that provided fire refugia during the fire,” she explained.

Fire refugia are parts of wildfires that burn at low intensity or don’t burn at all, and are where animals and plants are much more likely to survive.

Fairfax and her colleagues argue that beavers “can be part of a comprehensive fire-mitigation strategy while offering additional benefits to biological communities, including humans, even when fire is not an active threat.”

“Beaver conservation, beaver coexistence strategies, and beaver-based restoration should be strongly considered for inclusion when planning fire risk-mitigation strategies, and when developing or updating watershed and land management plans,” the paper concludes.