If I were queen of the beaver world, (and don’t tell me it can’t happen), I would make dam sure that any article that was supposed to be teaching about how important they are for water storage and biodiversity wouldn’t have stay mistakes or non-facts. Like saying that they eat fish

Or that they live in the dam.

Beavers use their dams as their homes. However, the dam also creates deeper water, making it easier for them to use their strength as swimmers to evade predators.

AS THEIR HOMES is the problem, Cole Hersey. If he had only said “For” their homes I would have even given him a pass. No, Cole they don’t use them AS their homes. They use them to raise the water so they can make build their homes in a completely different structure. Of course if you and I were trying to build a beaver dam in the middle of the creek we would find out pretty darn quickly that it doesn’t work really well if it’s hollow with a center space to live in. But you knew that, right?

Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how do you like the article?

Sonoma Valley Advocates Push for Reintroduction of Beavers

“[Beaver] dams in less flash flooding systems can act as a speed bump in a big torrential downpour,” Kate Lundquist, co-director of the Water Institute at the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center, said. This is what the Audisses noticed in reverse as the water rapidly rose on Fryer Creek—the sudden disappearance of a speed bump.

Advocates like those at OAEC argue that beavers play a key role in creating healthy waterways and ecosystems. The role of beavers in the recent storm is just one example of why advocates want to reintroduce—and protect—beavers throughout the state.

Now I don’t disagree with any of that, nice work all! See how easy that was?

Often, when a beaver colony moves into an area, they begin to slow the movement of water by building their dam. This, over long periods of time, has many positive impacts on native wildlife.

“Even if all they can do is show up and build one little pipsqueak dam and create a bank burrow, they’re already jacking up the habitat diversity and providing all kinds of refuge for a bunch of different species,” Lundquist said.

It doesn’t take long for beaver to make a difference. I saw more birds fishing our creek the very first year they came and we filmed the  mink in 2009.  Let a beaver role in and sit back and watch the changes unfold. It will happen faster then you think.

Beaver ponds also raise the height of the groundwater, bringing cooler water up into a stream. Endangered coho salmon, which are particularly sensitive to changes in water conditions, benefit greatly from beaver dams, both as a haven for juveniles, and by keeping the water at a cooler temperature than it would be otherwise.

Not only do beavers aid in providing more habitat, their dams also filter the water, making it cleaner downstream.

Yup. Now you’re talking.

Displaying a map of the Sonoma Valley watershed, Brock Dolman noted that the parts of the land where beavers could thrive are also where the most porous soils are. If beavers were more present in those areas, floods might have less of a damaging impact on those areas, and, in the fire season, could create larger refuges for wildlife.

I like that paragraph. Where do I sign up to endorse more like them? The less we concrete our stream the more beavers can do to help them. But honestly, they’ll try to work on them even with the concrete. We just won’t like it as much.

Even if one is concerned about the impacts of beavers, there are many cheap options to mitigate these issues, according to Dolman. In Fryer Creek, for instance, when beavers were first spotted in 2019, some were concerned it would create more flooding in the area, potentially drowning out the walking trails and emergency roads for vehicles.

In response, OAEC helped the City of Sonoma install a pond-levelling system on two of the dams, in order to insure the water did not completely inundate the area.

This, This. This. This is what we need. Beavers can cause problems. Beavers are important. We need them. Smart people solve problems using their brains and keep beavers around because we NEED THEM. 

Here endeth the lesson.