I can’t believe the headline isn’t from me, but you’ll never guess who that quippy little approximation of Biden’s infrastructure plan came from: Boris Johnson. But it works, I like it, and I’m taking it forward. Lots of surprises this morning, 30 names added to the letter so far. And a nice upcoming talk with Dr. Fairfax that mentions the beaver festival?

Beavers in the Landscape with Dr Emily Fairfax

Beaver dams are gaining popularity as a low-tech, low-cost strategy to build climate resiliency at the landscape scale. Emily Fairfax

Join Santa Barbara Permaculture Network for an evening with Dr. Emily Fairfax, PhD. as she shares her research focused on beaver, a keystone species that until very recently was a vastly underrated ecosystem restoration hero. Passionate about science from a young age, Emily Fairfax was happy when nature and science came together with her interest in beavers. As a geoscientist who studies ecohydrology of wetlands and riparian areas, it was a perfect academic and vocational match.

With extended droughts and catastrophic fires plaguing California and the West in recent years, Dr. Fairfax began focusing her research on the impact of beaver on wildfires. Squishy, wet landscapes simply don’t burn. And where beaver are, with multiple dam complexes and ponds, squishy land abounds. These conclusions prompted Fairfax to coin the phrase “Smokey the Beaver”.

Of course beavers and human settlements are often at odds. But in communities like Martinez, CA, where a popular Beaver Festival takes place every year, they and others have demonstrated these conflicts can be managed with clever strategies, good for the beaver and the community. And with these kind of beaver management strategies come interesting new jobs, especially good for our next generation, many who yearn for positive livelihoods. As part of the evening event we will share the work of, Cooper Lienheart a recent engineering grad of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, who currently works as a SLO Beaver Brigade Restoration Specialist, and has decided to make beaver and wetland restoration his life work.

Really? A mention in Santa Barbara? Oh okay, why not We deserve to be talked about!

Emily Fairfax is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Science and Resource Management at California State University Channel Islands.

Her current research focuses on the ecohydrology of riparian areas, particularly those that have been impacted by beaver damming. She used a combination of remote sensing, modeling, and field to work understand how beaver damming changes these landscapes and on what timescales those changes operate. Dr Fairfax also have an interest in geoscience education research, particularly curriculum development.

I was particularly struck by the list of resource attachments to learn more about the topic, Links to things like the beaver institute and Emily’s stopmotion, and Kyle Kosma’s beaver interactive listed on the website here, as well as the videos about the awesome chalk art done earlier in the year.