What a great interview. Rob Rich crossed my path years ago when he was working with Ben Goldfarb writing for High Country News. He commented on the website that he was really enjoying reading about our beavers. I can’t find the audio so you are going to have to click thru to the player but it is really worth it. Trust me.
Orange teeth! Vanilla butts! Architecture with twigs! Olde-timey joke books? Field naturalist, conservationist, wildlife tracker and “beaver believer” Rob Rich works with the National Wildlife Federation’s coordination of the Montana Beaver Working Group and answers all of our Castorological questions about: baby beavers, tooth tools, lodges, dams, the sound of water, the slap of a tail, who eats beaver and why, beavers in peril, in folklore, in smut books, in your neighborhood and in your dreams forever. Also: yes we discuss slang.
Its winter and food is getting harder to come by. Wing it Wildlife
A North American Beaver in the mist feeds at its extensive Winter food supply next to it lodge along an icy northern USA river on a foggy morning. Save our Beavers and their works for the utmost biodiversity.
If I ever doubt that we are in a different beaver world than the one I grew up in, remind me to look at this photo. This is Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, It was posted by Ben himself so I know its real.
Ben Goldfarb:
U.S. Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) displays his impeccable taste in environmental literature. Next up: a senate subcommittee on beaver restoration?
Do you know what this means? It means Michael Bennet knows about Martinez and our beavers and ME!
Closer to home KPFA ran a nice beaver interview yesterday with some local champions.
In this age of global weirding where climate disruption has tumbled the Goldilocks effect into unruly surges of too much and too little water, the restoration of beavers offers ancient nature-based solutions to the tangle of challenges bedeviling human civilization. Droughts, floods, soil erosion, climate change, biodiversity loss – you name it, and beaver is on it. In this episode, Kate Lundquist and Brock Dolman of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center share their semi-aquatic journey to becoming Beaver Believers. They are part of a passionate global movement to bring back our rodent relatives who show us how to heal nature by working with nature.
The fallout from BeaverCon Colorado has been beyond glorious. We’ve had article after article boasting about beaver benefits but this one takes the proverbial cake.
When flash floods filled Colorado Springs streets last summer, the water raged down from Black Forest all the way to Dallas May’s ranch north of Lamar.
The flood made the lengthy journey in just two days, but when it hit May’s wetlands, the water slowed way down. It took 2½ days to travel just 7 miles through the ranch, May said.
The muddy floodwaters left his property clean and clear, filtered by a wetland system created by beavers, who build their dams on the High Plains with bulrush and cattails, unlike their fellows in the mountains.
Could you design a better ad for beavers than a rancher who says their dams protected my land during the floods? I think Not.
“If it wasn’t for these beavers, there would be no water going into the (Arkansas) river from here,” May said. At twilight one day in October, May showed off several beaver ponds on his property during what is typically a dry time for waterways across Colorado. The beavers stayed well out of sight, but he described them as bigger than those in the mountains, and adventurous when necessary, venturing out of the safety of the waterways to trek across his alfalfa fields.
May also explained his philosophy for managing the ranch he’s worked since the 1980s and now owns with his family.
“Our goal is to keep everything in as natural a state as we can. … We don’t kill coyotes. We don’t kill prairie dogs. We don’t kill rattlesnakes. We don’t trap or poison anything. If God intended for a species to be here, we want it to be here,”he said. When the system is intact, it functions well. The coyotes have plenty to eat and don’t touch his cattle, he said.
I am literally swooning.
The healthy wetlands keep water flowing in the creek through May’s ranch year-round and recharge the shallow groundwater keeping the grass healthy for his cattle. The wetlands also support a vast number of birds, small fish and native grasses. A team from the Denver Botanical Gardens documented 85 different species of grass, May said.
Go read the whole thing. Dallas is the kind of man of the year we need more of.
Orange teeth! Vanilla butts! Architecture with twigs! Olde-timey joke books? Field naturalist, conservationist, wildlife tracker and “beaver believer” Rob Rich works with the National Wildlife Federation’s coordination of the Montana Beaver Working Group and answers all of our Castorological questions about: baby beavers, tooth tools, lodges, dams, the sound of water, the slap of a tail, who eats beaver and why, beavers in peril, in folklore, in smut books, in your neighborhood and in your dreams forever. Also: yes we discuss slang.
