Well, well. well. Guess who’s featured in this issue of Forest News? I’ll give you a hint. It has a flat tail. What a great outcome from the Colorado Beaver Summit last month. And I’m looking at you California, Ahem.
The issue is all about how badly our forest have been hurt by our activities over the past couple centuries, including mining and trapping beavers. It specifically says that things can be improved by restoring the beaver population as quickly as possibly. Here are some highlights but you can read the entire article by clicking below.
Jackie Corday believes the Forest Service is “the agency that can make the greatest impact for
improving headwaters health in Colorado and other Western states.” Therefore, the Forest Service “can and should be a leader in scaling up headwater restoration of streams and wetlands — our natural water infrastructure — on our National Forests to improve water security and climate resilience to wildfires and drought.”
Without beavers maintaining the dams they’d built for millions of years, rivers began to flow faster, carving channels below their floodplains, and water drained out of the landscape, including the alluvial aquifers. The resulting ecosystem is drier, less resilient to drought, and more prone to catastrophic wildfire. Given the time frame, historical records cannot even document the extent of wetlands loss from over-trapping beavers. Historic mining and logging practices added to the stream-health problem, as have unmanaged grazing of livestock, riparian vegetation removal, alteration of stream flows, and channelization.
It’s so rare to read anyone taking the long view and thinking about what damage it did to our streams to trap out all their beavers that I always get a little misty eyed when I read it. We shouldn’t be at all surprised. Jackie is the old graduate of Ellen Wohl who has been churning research papers and recent a book walking through step by step the value of beaver meadows.
To begin restoring waterways and increase resilience to the effects of climate change, numerous agency reports and academic studies indicate that taking a low-tech, process-based restoration (LTPBR) approach provides an economical, scalable natural solution. Utah State University Watershed Sciences Professor Joe Wheaton and his colleagues are leading the way. They currently work with the Forest Service, BLM, Natural Resources Conservation Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, state wildlife agencies, conservation organizations, and private landowners. Their LTPBR work relies on local, natural materials to create temporary structures that mimic the influence of beaver dams.
Just making sure everyone sees that sentence, the point of making BDA’s is to encourage B.E.A.V.E.R.S. to take over and maintain them. Which means you may just have to stop killing them for a milasecond. I know it’s hard, But just TRY and let them do what we are telling you they can do. Okay?
Corday also points out that LTPBR “fits perfectly into helping achieve existing priorities” as stated in the Forest Service Strategic Plan: • Conserve, maintain, and restore watersheds, ecosystems, and the services they provide to people.• Use the Watershed Condition Framework to identify restoration priorities. • Maintain water of sufficient quantity and quality to sustain aquatic life and support terrestrial habitats, domestic uses, recreation opportunities, and scenic character. LTPBR is also an effective strategy to protect drinking water supplies by mitigating post-wildfire debris flows. More in-depth information about LTPBR’s many benefits and applications is provided in Professor Wheaton’s April 2021 presentation for the Natural Areas Association.
Here’s a list of all the things the Forest Service is tasked with doing. Here’s a list of all the things beavers do for the environment in which they are allowed to live. See the overlap? It’s the simplest venn diagram ever.
FSEEE-Newsletter-Fall-2021-WEB
