“We have lots in store for you, whether you’d like to Listen to our radio programs or  Learn from our editorial stories or Watch our videos.  Encounters was created for explorers like you!”

Under the direction of this man. The site has lots of nice video and audio that you could spend hours exploring, but it was this page in particular of course that got my attention. This article was written by Liz McKenzie.

Beaver – Ecology

The Animal That Redesigned a Continent

“There are two species of animals that profoundly changed the ecological face of North America before Europeans arrived: First, Native Americans with the controlled use of fire, and second, beavers with the controlled use of water.

In pre-colonial times, beavers were found over most of the North American continent. An essential fact of beaver behavior is that they dam streams to raise the water level and make ponds. These water catchments provide excellent habitat for fish and turtles, frogs and toads, ducks and geese…plus aquatic plants and other species. And by cutting trees, beavers create openings in the forest, which diversify habitat for a wide assortment of plants like willows and alders, and for wildlife such as moose, elk, and deer.”

Now what better sign can there be that you should grab your coffee cup and settle in for a nice read? I’m liking this very much already. This article appeared in 2017 so it is pre-Ben’s book even. Enjoy.

“Without the beavers to maintain dams, the barricades broke and decayed—and as a result literally millions of water catchments dried up. Ponds became meadows; meadows became forests or agricultural land.

This reversed the important work that beavers had done…greatly reducing the ecological richness and biodiversity on a continental scale. What was once a lacework of bogs, ponds, small openings in the forests, meadows and trees, had become something more uniform, no longer providing habitats for the many plants and animals it had once supported.”

I close my eyes sometimes and try to imagine what it was like – watching those streams dry up and the entire beaver pond become a ghost town. Aren’t you curious? Of course, I don’t think anyone really wrote about it at first, because we were still pretending our fur hunt didn’t make a difference and the bounty would go on forever. Sound familiar?

Ecologists have come to understand something that was probably well known among Native American people—how important beavers are for the enrichment and diversity of ecological communities. And in the dry western states, we have learned that beavers are also powerful conservators of water—by creating reservoirs, stabilizing water levels and preventing streambed erosion.

Imagine the potential benefits from millions of small ponds and wetlands that slow the runoff from periodic rains and store water that would otherwise quickly disappear. And all of this vitally important work being done by a full time volunteer force of beavers.

This goes on to describe the gradual return of the population and the conflicts that arise when beavers try to share our spaces. But it does a nice job describing the tools we have to resolve these conflicts. And why they’re worth using. Nice  work, Liz!

I’m assuming the site is Canadian based on its references and find myself wanting to end by posting this: