So a very important thing happened last week that you might not have known about. You might remember the name Felicia Marcus who was formerly California’s water board chair and recently appointed a fellow at Stanford’s “Water in the West” program.
Felicia Marcus is the William C. Landreth Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Water in the West Program, an attorney, consultant and member of the Water Policy Group. She most recently served as chair of the California State Water Resources Control Board, implementing laws regarding drinking water and water quality and state’s water rights, hearing regional board water quality appeals, settling disputes and providing financial assistance to communities to upgrade water infrastructure.
Okay so when I read about her a couple years ago I sent her an invite to the California Beaver Summit and she was very interested which surprised me. Imagine how surprised I was this week when her report dropped.
This is one of those weighty documents that comes with an executive summary and lots of media resources so it can make an easy landing in the public eye. Just so you know, NBS are nature based solutions.
We are at a pivotal time in the world’s response to climate change. Fortunately, the policy discourse is evolving at an accelerated rate. There is a growing recognition among world, national, state, tribal, and local leaders of climate change’s catastrophic impact on people and the ecosystems they rely on, and of the need to act rapidly to both mitigate that damage and adapt to the inevitable changes to come. At the same time, there is also a growing global recognition that the loss of ecosystem function has a tremendous impact upon climate, water security, and other essential elements of life. 2 Water is at the core of those key issues. As Brad Udall, Senior Water and Climate Research Scientist at Colorado State University’s Colorado Water Center, is often quoted as saying, “Climate change is water change.” 3 The first effects of climate change manifest in the water sphere, whether through drought, flooding, sea level rise, or stressed species. At the same time, intelligent water management can be at the core of both mitigating and adapting to climate change, with ecosystem and river restoration playing a critical and beneficial role.
While “nature’s engineers” are endearing, the results of their industriousness have also been called out as a natural firebreak and potential widespread tool for slowing fire making their reintroduction an important part of potential plans to expand meadow restoration efforts or integrate meadow restoration into forest management. The role of beavers in wildfire prevention/mitigation has been elevated in the media since the large wildfires of this past year, which should also add focus on this important and restorative means of integrating nature-based solutions. The science demonstrating the benefits of beavers’ hydrological work is young but an active field of research. Researchers in 2015 found that the average beaver pond contains 1.1 million gallons of water and stores another 6.7 million gallons of water underground. Beaver water complexes can even act as a fire break against the megafires that climate chaos is wreaking here. And given that desiccated plants are volatile tinder for fires, it’s possible that a widespread return of beavers could help reduce fires both by keeping plants better watered and by providing more local evaporation from the ponds and transpiration from plants to fuel local rain.
HOHOHO! So it’s possible beavers can prevent fires and save water is it? Stanford thinks we might just need to take the drastic step of introducing them in California. GEE. Guess who will read this rep0rt? EVERYBODY. Guess who’s already read it?
The governor’s chief of staff.
On May 13, 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom announced a proposal for California to develop a new policy, complete with significant funding and staffing, to develop a beaver strategy. Climate and water benefits are both prominently noted. The proposal, which has yet to be adopted by the Legislature, explains: To be successful in our efforts to protect biodiversity, the Department must take a proactive leap towards bringing beavers back onto the landscape through a concerted effort to combine prioritized restoration projects, partnerships with local, federal, and state agencies and tribes, and updated policies and practices that support beaver management and conservation throughout the State.
Beavers are known for their ability to build dams and change waterways – but the ecosystem benefits provided to other native species in the process may be less recognized. It might be odd, but beavers are an untapped, creative climate solving hero that helps prevent the loss of biodiversity facing California. In the intermountain West, wetlands, though they are present on just 2 percent of total land area, support 80 percent of biodiversity
You know what I love? When all the smart people start quoting each other in the hopes that no one will be able to tell eventually who said it first. Go ahead guys. Take credit for beavers. They can handle it.
This paragraph blew me away when I saw it.
Yes that is Amelia’s wonderful logo; in exactly the very best place it could possibly be. Because a perfect illustration will find its way in the world. And that is perfect. We all know it.
At a time when the fate of our planet is at stake, NBS offers the opportunity
to advance sound climate policy while meeting other societal needs, particularly for water. The work is complex but attainable, rewarding, and essential for a liveable future.
Oh and on the FIRST PAGE of the report is the acknowledgements which ends with this remarkable sentence
“Significant source of beaver lore“. Yep. That sound like me. Just call me the beaver-lore warrior. Go read the whole thing and then share it with everyone you know.
