Good morning. It’s he last official day of vacation, we’re getting ready for the annual ravioli feast and making cookies today, which is always pleasant in a slightly terrifying way. The fires in Australia are notching up the panic about climate change and lots of folks are pinning their hopes on beavers. Which is okay by me. Better late than never, I always say. Here are some thoughts from Steve Jones of the UK who maintains the Natural Areas Blog.

Re-wetting the countryside

As I write this, parts of Australia are gripped by what seems like a perpetual drought and, with its forests and shrublands tinder-dry, forest fires are raging across some coastal areas.

Climate scientists project increasing summer heat in the UK, as the Mediterranean climate space shifts progressively north. We can expect our average summers to be warmer, and more frequent, on average hotter, summer droughts.

So, to help to mitigate the fire risks posed by the warming we’re already locked into, we need to re-wet floodplain corridors and re-moisten whole farmed landscapes. Here’s how:

A how-to ;list on avoiding wildfires. Now this is useful. Are you paying attention?

• River-floodplain corridors should be formally designated as Critical Natural Infrastructure, and managed as integrated wholes. Management should be restricted to enabling natural system recovery, in an expansion of natural coastal management into fluvial systems.

• Beavers should be reintroduced at key sites to provide strategic source populations for progressive re-colonisation of all river systems across the UK.

Did you catch that? Beavers are the answer to a drying planet. Also a flooding plane. Also a burning planet. Also a species deprived planet, There are few more suggestions on the list regarding not building in flood plains, but that seems like a DAM good start to me.

In the absence of beavers or pending their return, all surface field edge drains and streams should have leaky dams and small wetland features installed, across entire catchments.

BDA’s for everyone waiting in long lines for beavers. It should stretch for miles. There should barely be enough beavers to go around. You know is coming. In a few short years everyone will want theirs.