Animalia is an swanky newsletter and blog offered by the Washington Post in 2016. It continues to offer weird and wonderful news about the wild kingdom all around us. And guess what caught my eye recently?
BEAVERS CAN PAVE A WAY FOR CONSERVATION & CAPITALISM TO WORK TOGETHER
We often talk about the dual challenges of our climate and biodiversity crises. How our efforts to lower emissions and slow global warming is getting billions of dollars of funding globally because the primary form of that – renewable energy – is big business and companies stand to make hefty profits from things like wind power, electric cars, decarbonized cement production, and even industries we question a lot like direct air capture. The latter won’t ever need to come close to its goals for those behind it to make money pursuing them given the capital being thrown at it.
When it comes to protecting biodiversity, funding is way behind. So are pledges, government commitments, and even media coverage. Heard of COP26 in Glasgow last November? Of course you did. Heard of COP15 in Kunming last October which is focused on biodiversity? Probably not.
So much of the funding that goes towards protecting and conserving our natural ecosystems and the wild species that keep them alive comes in the form of grants and donations. Let’s be clear, we are never going to solve our biodiversity crisis and prevent a 6th mass extinction with grants and donations.
We need to create pathways for capitalism to work for nature, and no, furiously planting trees everywhere we can in the name of carbon offsets is not the answer. We have a great podcast episode coming out soon about the proper approach to forest restoration.
This becomes even tricker when it comes to protecting critical species. And by critical we mean all species, because as we hope you’ve learned from us already, everything from parasites to elephants serve important roles. Some species however, serve such critical roles that we can 
easily tie their restoration and behavior to positive economic outcomes for people. By doing so, we could spawn a new area of for-profit conservation work that can really accelerate funding.
So today we are going to profile the animal that we believe is best suited to kickstart such a system, especially here in the United States….the beaver!
You have ALL MY ATTENTION. I’ve always said that “selfishness” is our only truly renewable resource. Let’s just see where capitalism (which is really selfishness with a fancy name) can take beavers. Shall we?
In order to bring this concept to life, we found a really amazing, detailed economic study of beaver impacts on the Escalante Basin in Utah from 2011. Here are all 70 pages of this pretty dense study if you want to read through it yourself.
The source of economic value from beavers comes in the form of the dams they build and beaver ponds they form. Contrary to popular belief, beavers don’t live in the dams themselves. They build them to create ponds deep enough to ward off predators and live in island dwellings they build in the middle. This creates a safe haven for beavers to live, raise young, and feed off much of the plant live their ponds help flourish.
There are many positive impacts from their work both upstream and downstream from their dams, such as:
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- They increase water quantity and storage by forming slow moving pools of water that are deep and more resisted to drying out
- These beaver ponds also catch much of the sediment that would otherwise flow downstream where it sinks to the bottom and is safely consumed by plant life in their deep, colder pools, which improves downstream water quality. Each beaver pond can collect up to 80,000 cubic feet of sediment over it’s typical 10-year lifetime
- They created wetland conditions due to the water pooling in riparian areas which increases water supply to trees, captures carbon, and fosters habitat for many other species
- They increase groundwater storage which can then be used for drinking water and irrigation water as is commonly the case in the Western US. In an Oregon study, the water height in a well near a beaver dam, for example, rose 0.35 meters while the water level in the nearby beaver pond rose 0.22 meters. The water height in another well far downstream of any beaver activity rose only 0.17 meters during the same period.
- They help mitigate flooding because their dams slow down water flow in peak water flow seasons
- The beaver ponds increase plant diversity both underwater and along the river banks, which in turn increases numbers for fish and small mammals which in turn feeds apex predators. Research from Wyoming found that duck density on streams with beaver ponds was 7.5 ducks/km while density on unmodified waterways was only 0.1 ducks/km
- Finally, the trees they take down to build their dams and consumer the bark are typically those that diseased, dried out or on their last legs (easier to take down), which disperses seeds and fosters new tree growth and even creates natural firebreaks to slow down wildfires
I mean honestly it’s kind of wild how beneficial beavers are. We are trying to use technology and policy to solve all of the issues above that beavers can do just by, well, being a beaver. No technology or policy needed. What we need is a company to come to market to restore them. So what might that look like?
I agree. This is a Zero brainer. Beavers are philanthopists that invest everywhere they land. And we’ve been just killing them because they get in our way. Even we should be following THEIR way.
Hmm. That all seems pretty darn convincing. Do you have any more charts or graphs about beaver benefits? The money people just love them some charts and graphs.
Ohh that’s good. Now you’re talking. I bet as soon as everyone sees this chart they will go right out and save all the beavers they can find! What’s that? This study was published in 2011? So people have been blithley ignoring this news for nearly 11 years. Are you fricken Kidding me?
Hey I know what we need a study on. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?
I couldn’t find any estimates online on what it takes on average cost wise to reintroduce and restore beavers, but I trust it is far less then $63,000 per beaver given it’s being done today by non-profits. So there is a handsome margin to work with here.
Who would pay for this? The same customers who are paying for the river restoration and water management tech today. Cities, states, utilities, and private corporations.
This is not just a matter of releasing a bunch of beavers into the basin and then job well done. No, this type of business would need operations and staff. There are ways to augment beaver dam building via laying foundations in their early days of recovery. We would need to invest in proper measurement and data tools to monitor progress. Efforts would need to be made to mark off and protect beaver ponds in early development from human intervention. And so forth.
This may sound like a crazy idea, but honestly, it’s not. It just hasn’t been done before. The only way we are ever going to move the volume of capital we need into protecting ecosystems and mitigating biodiversity loss is if we do it with a capitalism approach. Beavers may provide the best gateway in doing so.
Oh I think it’s pretty much about the engineers and not the engineering. But if you want to help by building them some BDAs to get started and maybe a little lodge to give them shelter from predators that would be nice. They can take it from there.
