Category: Beavers and climate change

ALL POLITICS IS BEAVERS

If you’re lucky in this world people report on your scholarly achievement when it’s newly published. People like shiny new things. You can show the article to your mom or dad and they will feel as if their college dollars were well spent. It helps you get hired so you can support your own research next time. That’s what happens if you’re LUCKY.

You would be crazy to expect them to be talking about this research 5 years later. Even 2 years later is pretty unlikely. But not if you’re Jeff Baldwin.

Beaver Politics in Oregon

A North American Beaver – Castor Canadensis – sitting in the grass grooming itself. Along the shore of a wetland pond. Near Portland in Western Oregon.

With climate change transforming the American West, an industrious mammal could help mitigate some of the worst of the coming drought and flooding crises. The West is getting drier in the dry season and more prone to flooding in the wet season. Beavers could well be a relatively low-cost part of resiliency efforts. As natural ecosystem engineers, these largest-of-North-America’s rodents “increase water storage in ponds and surrounding floodplains, thus slowing winter flows, increasing riparian and meadow water availability, and extending stream flow up to six weeks into dry summer seasons.”

But in Oregon, the Beaver State, beaver politics, for want of a better term, make reintroduction problematic. Scholar Jeff Baldwin details the institutional obstacles to the use beaver in mitigation initiatives. Public policy is mostly controlled by those opposed to the animals. Across seventy-five percent of the state, a predator designation means they “may be killed without record or regulation.” The same statute also guarantees that no information is collected about these killings. Evidence of beaver extirpation is therefore anecdotal and “dismissed as such.”

For more than a century, “state and federal governments have vacillated between promoting and killing beaver.” For instance, Oregon banned trapping in 1899; rescinded the ban in 1918; re-instituted the ban in 1932; then allowed trapping on agricultural land in 1951. There aren’t very many licensed trappers today, but they have a strong lobby. And with the predator listing, you don’t need even a license to kill them in plenty of places.

Well that is crazy I agree. But to be honest things are no crazier in Oregon than they are in California. Probably a little LESS crazy to be honest. We are all suffering from no water or too much water and we’re both highly flammable. We both should be standing in line waiting for our turn to have beavers on our land.

But of course we’re not.

Meanwhile, reintroduction efforts, in cooperation with landowners, in the 1940s successfully boosted beaver populations, a history forgotten by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife professionals Baldwin interviewed.

Before all this, beaver populations across North America were attacked with gusto to feed a European market that had already trapped out Europe’s indigenous beaver species. Estimates of the pre-colonization population of beavers in North America run from sixty to three-hundred million. Today, the population is estimated at three to six million, mostly in Canada and Alaska.

Journals of explorers and trappers testify to Western landscapes built in part by beavers. Writes Baldwin, “Now-channelized and arid valley floors across the American West were once difficult to traverse due to multiple channels and broad riparian flood plains covered by dense vegetation.” Could such landscapes, created and maintained by beavers, be brought back?

Gee I don’t know. Something seems to be standing in our way. Something pesky and wide spread. What could it be? I can’t quite put my finger on it.

Examining “the culture of land and wildlife management professionals and policy makers,” Baldwin conducted forty key informant interviews and did a “critical review of literature published by state wildlife management and climate change institutions.”

He found five institutional obstacles to beaver recolonization and/or reintroduction. Two were legislative. Beavers are listed as predators—pests of agriculture crops and products—so they can be killed with impunity. And climate change policy recommendations have to be “politically neutral,” meaning they are essentially impossible to enact, as neither beaver nor climate change is considered apolitical by many of the involved bureaus and land managers.

The three other obstacles were “positions shared by many wildlife management specialists.” These were: there are enough beavers already; licensed trapping doesn’t affect population; and reintroductions are ineffective. Baldwin’s research undermines all three of these assertions.

Alright JEFF! Tell us why!

In fact, “the benefits of beaver recolonization,” are well-established and well-documented, but Oregon’s political process stymies action. Between 2008 and 2017, nine state agencies and working groups released thirteen reports addressing climate change and wildlife and land adaptation. Baldwin notes that none of these mentioned beavers. To avoid controversy and legislative veto, the reports “generally avoid calls to make any material changes.” [Baldwin’s italics]

In Oregon, the Department of Agriculture “also represents the timber industry,” and since beaver reintroductions can lead to “road failure,” the powerful industry demands the right to control beavers on their land.

Politics and attitudes don’t change as fast as the climate. The fate of the giant Castoroides beavers, as large as bears, may be a teachable moment here: climate change did them in.

Baldwin concludes that de-listing of beavers as predators would be a key step to re-beavering the Beaver State. Meanwhile, Oregon’s indigenous tribes are already paving the way with beaver reintroductions of their own

Well they say all politics is local. I would say that “All politics is beavers”. Beaver is the ultimate NIMBY. Try living with a beaver dam in your city for a decade and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

The article ends with a nice reference to Jeff’s paper and a link so readers can see for themselves. Remember that Jeff is at Sonoma state now and was the one responsible for getting the beaver summit to be hosted there. He was thrilled when I sent him this news article. You can see why.

Maybe if we drown the west in good news about beavers SOMEONE will finally start paying attention.

BEAVERS IN THE LA TIMES

Do you all hear that whirring draining sucking sound all around us? It’s the noise of the tide finally turning. We knew it would happen. But mark July 25th in your calendars. It will all be easier after this. Remember that.

Op-Ed: Want to fight climate change and drought at the same time? Bring back beavers

Millions of highly skilled environmental engineers stand ready to make our continent more resilient to climate change. They restore wetlands that absorb carbon, store water, filter pollution and clean and cool waters for salmon and trout. They are recognized around the world for helping to reduce wildfire risk. Scientists have valued their environmental services at close to $179,000 per square mile annually.

And they work for free.

Our ally in mitigating and adapting to climate change across the West could be a paddle-tailed rodent: the North American beaver.

Oh My GOODNESS! I’m so excited. I’m sitting in the front row so eager for the state of California to read this article I can’t see strait.

There’s a strong consensus among scientists and environmental managers on the benefits of working with beavers to protect our natural environments. Beavers can help us continue to live on, work with and enjoy our Western landscape. As ecosystem engineers, they build dams and dig canals to escape predators. Their manipulation of plants for food and building materials produces wide-ranging environmental gains.

Yet despite beavers’ ecosystem benefits, we have long pushed them out of their homes. When the European-American fur trade killed hundreds of millions of beavers, it destroyed the engine that built and maintained North American wetlands. California alone has lost an estimated 90% of its wetland area. Humans continue to tear down beavers’ dams and lodges when they get in our way.

Rather than chase beavers off, it is time to invite them back.

Watershed scientists and state and federal land managers can identify the thousands of streams most suited to beavers. Simple steps can help bring them to watersheds in need — whether that means helping restore river environments to attract dispersing juvenile beavers from existing nearby populations, or reintroducing beavers to locations where they had thrived before the fur trade and habitat degradation destroyed them as well as their homes.

I think it’s kind of odd to suggest we are just telling them to “move along, we don’t need your kind around here” instead of directly stating that we are in fact KILLING them and throwing their treasures down to toilet because it would require an ounce of effort to manage their behavior.

But that’s just me.

Beavers can then set in motion protective natural processes. Their dams and canals slow the flow of streams and rivers, spreading water across the floodplain. Once slowed, the water loses its ability to carry sand, silt and gravel, so these materials accumulate. The wet ground and regular sediment deposits make fertile conditions for vegetation that has evolved with beavers and is more productive when regularly chewed. All of this builds and maintains wetlands.

This nature-based restoration can in turn help stave off the worst effects of climate change that are warming streams, deepening droughts and fueling wildfires. These threats harm native fish and wildlife in our communities while draining billions of dollars from our economies.

Riverine wetlands rebuilt by beavers can counteract rising temperatures, nourishing vegetation that stores carbon and benefiting sensitive species including steelhead trout. Spreading water across the floodplain creates a network of firebreaks — gaps in combustible vegetation that can stop or slow wildfires. And beaver wetlands help combat drought because their dams raise water levels so the ground stores water like a sponge, percolating out in drier seasons, which keeps streams flowing instead of going dry.

As part of a team of state, federal and university researchers, we tested the capacity of beavers along an eastern Oregon creek so eroded from years of poor management that the water ran many feet below the surrounding terrain. The erosion led to dried-out floodplains, dead stream-side vegetation and a self-sustaining cycle of drying and degradation in the channel.

Well now this is definitely going to piss off the folks in San Diego that are sure beavers aren’t native and destructive to the endangered magic arroyo toad. I hope they have an extra cup of coffee this morning.

Fixing the creek would require slowing that water down, piling it up to reconnect the channel to its floodplain. This would be a big ask for beavers on their own, so we helped. We hand-built structures to mimic beaver dams to begin slowing and spreading the flow.

This work attracted the first beavers from other environments. In just a few years, more beavers found the spot and assumed the maintenance. Building on our initial efforts, they transformed logs, mud and sticks into structures that spanned the valley and spread the water across many small branching channels, canals and ponds. Willows and other stream-side vegetation emerged. Water soaked the ground in storage that gradually filtered back out, offsetting dry spells.

Stream-side communities might worry that letting a wild dam builder loose might spur flooding that could damage property. But beavers are creatures of habit, meaning we can predict which locations have the lowest potential for human conflicts and greatest potential for environmental benefits. We can entice beavers to remote areas such as millions of acres of national forest and other federal and state lands. And we have tools to prevent beavers’ work from damaging property, such as devices that keep beaver ponds at safe levels, fencing or paint to protect trees and screening to ensure drainage systems are not plugged.

The work is also relatively cheap. The main costs of beaver-based stream restoration involve helping them get a foothold by starting restoration work ourselves and, where necessary, transporting beavers to the right natural site. This approach typically costs thousands of dollars per mile, not the millions per mile we often spend on infrastructure solutions.

Well that will turn some heads. BDAs are like crack or meth to these folks. Your first hits free. They aren’t excited yet about the actual B’S but that will come. We hope.

This solution also requires not destroying our population of environmental heroes. Last year alone, approximately 25,000 beavers were killed by wildlife control officers in response to people’s complaints and requests to protect their property. Imagine the value to communities of promoting nonlethal options instead, such as adapting the environment for coexistence with beavers or, when that’s not an option, moving them to less conflict-prone locations.

The job is enormous, but so is the capacity of beavers to help. Modest funding for beaver restoration was added to California’s budget this year. Groups that protect wildlife, fisheries and wetlands should join forces across the West to make beavers integral to a coordinated climate change response.

That’s a weird statistic to share. Why not focus on beaver deaths in California specifically? We know how many permission slips were handed to kill beavers in the golden state. Why not report that number maybe even specifying how many in the bottom half of California?

Still. Still WONDERFUL to have an OpEd in the LA Times and wonderful to think of all the eyes it will be read by. At a certain point this is going to make sense to people. And we’re going to get to stop clearing the path with a machete through the back country.

Remember July 25th.

Oh and what a great day to share this video that Cheryl caught of our new beaver friends in Pleasant Hill. Which is suddenly looking a whole lot more pleasant to me.

ALEX BRINGS OUT THE BIG GUNS

heidi08 Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Fire Prevention July 19, 2022

More great beaver reporting from Alex Hagar at KUNC in colorado. He is officially a believer, This one even includes Ellen Wohl which I would officially call the bring out the “Big guns”.

In the face of climate change, beavers are engineering a resistance

The study is largely a summary of existing research, pulling together and contextualizing established science about rivers and beavers. It makes the case that beavers were once pivotal in shaping and maintaining healthy riverscapes before their populations were crippled by years of trapping.

Chris Jordan, an Oregon-based ecologist with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, is one of the study’s co-authors. He said the research stands in the face of “dire warnings” and the “doom” of harm beyond our control.

“In reality,” he said, “it’s not out of our control. Here is something that we can do. Here is something that we can think about as an adaptation and mitigation strategy – returning riverscapes to their natural state. And that’s going to give us climate change protection and resilience.”

That protection and resilience comes in a few forms. The first is a safeguard against flooding. Warming temperatures are increasing the frequency of heavy rain and rapidly melting snow. In the channel of a narrow stream or river, that surge of water is likely to quickly overtop the banks and flood. Beaver wetlands, with their wide swaths of soggy land, would help spread some of that water out and limit flooding downstream.

Just as they are helpful in the face of too much water, beaver complexes have proven useful in areas with not enough. High-mountain snow serves as a kind of natural reservoir for the region, slowly releasing water throughout the spring and early summer, assuring a steady supply to the places where humans divert and collect it. But as the West rapidly warms and dries, snowpack is getting smaller and melting earlier. Beavers, meanwhile, are essentially building miniature reservoirs in mountainous areas throughout the region.

Drought also means an increased risk of wildfires, and beavers have proven their mettle against the flames. Even in areas completely ravaged by wildfire, where tree trunks are scorched into blackened toothpicks and soil is left gray and ashen, beaver complexes survive unscathed. The wet earth and thriving greenery resist burning, leaving oases of green in the middle of the lifeless moonscapes left behind by wildfire.

Spreading water out across valley floors also has proven benefits for water temperature, water quality and even carbon sequestration. Water laden with sediment, nitrates or carbon slows down in beaver ponds, allowing particles in it to settle or get consumed by microbes, unlike in a fast-moving stream.

WHEN THINGS HEAT UP YOU NEED BEAVERS

heidi08 Beavers and climate change July 17, 2022

Wild fires and soaring temperatures are kicking the snot out of Europe at the moment making folks more and more grateful for the wet places beavers protect. Like this one.

The Wild Ken Hill beavers helping protect wildlife in heatwave

Much of the UK is sweltering in a heatwave with temperatures next week expected to rise still further. But what does it all mean for our flora and fauna?

More than 2,500 species have been recorded at Wild Ken Hill, a 4,000-acre nature site in Norfolk stretching from the sea through coastal scrub and freshwater marshes to wood pasture and farmland.

The site’s ecologist Hetty Grant said the current heatwave meant “a lot of species are suffering”.

Hedgehogs and snails in particularly were struggling with the current heat. “The impact is definitely varied,” she said. “There are some winners but there are many more losers.

Boy I bet when it gets all hot like that you wish there was a nice cool pond to duck into. Get it? DUCK into?

“Livestock in particular is affected when the water level goes down.”

The current hot weather has highlighted what the project sees as the “crucial” importance of beavers.

A keystone species, known for creating habitats for other animals, they were hunted to extinction in Britain for their fur, glands and meat in the 16th Century.

Ms Grant said the beavers at Wild Ken Hill, which is holding a day-long nature festival in September, were already making their impact known in terms of water preservation at the site.

“The beavers on site here are doing an excellent job of holding water.

“They have built dams which are holding about 1m (3ft) of water which is being reabsorbed. They are doing a crucial job here.

“The amount of water they can hold in the land is just phenomenal.”

Yes it certainly is. In fact I bet you wish they had never been absent from England’s green and pleasant land.

She told how the animals at Wild Ken Hill, which was set up to return land to nature and sustainable farming, had “space to behave naturally” in the heat, which meant seeking out cooler and wetter spaces as required without human interference.

“They will try and stay cool,” she said. “The current heat wave has come on the back of a period of drought, which meant the water was already lacking and is being reduced further.”

The longer term impact of rising temperatures, she said, meant a greater struggle to survive for various types of flora and fauna.

Bee Eaters is cool. Maybe not for the bees. But for the birders and life-listers definitely, No doubt they appreciate the beaver ponds too.

One example, she said, was the rising number of bird species arriving from Europe, such as bee eaters, which in turn meant greater challenges for the bird species already here.

The exotic bee eater is usually found in southern Europe and northern Africa but are being pushed north by rising temperatures.

Asked what the general public could do to support wildlife when out and about, Ms Grant said: “It is all about acting responsibly.

“Being out with nature is really good for people and we can do our bit by keeping dogs on leads rather than letting them go off through areas where birds might be nesting because unprotected eggs do not fare well when exposed.”

And beavers. Don’t forget the beavers. They need plenty of defenders.

CLIMATE HEROES GET COVERAGE

heidi08 Beavers and climate change July 14, 2022

Some great coverage for Chris Jordan and Emily Fairfax’s new article on climate change, this time in Scientific American. I’m sure this will get seen by some of the right eyes. The article ran first in Politico with a photo of a nutria but I’m sure none of us our surprised.

The Beaver Emerges as a ‘Climate-Solving Hero’

CLIMATEWIRE | Behold the beaver: master engineer, wetland dweller and a national symbol of Canada.

Now add climate change specialist to the list, scientists say.

According to new research, beavers are among the world’s most effective practitioners of climate adaptation and resilience, something biologists have known for years but have recently documented through field study.

Experts from the Northwest Fisheries Science Center and the California State University Channel Islands say that as droughts and floods become more acute with global warming, dam-building beavers are helping stave off the worst impacts by holding back essential water that otherwise would run off or dry up.

“It may seem trite to say that beavers are a key part of a national climate action plan, but the reality is that they are a force of 15–40 million highly skilled environmental engineers. We cannot afford to work against them any longer; we need to work with them,” Chris E. Jordan and Emily Fairfax wrote in their paper titled “Beaver: The North American freshwater climate action plan.”

Whooo hoo hoo! I’m an American and I think that’s plenty scientific. The article continues:

The research, published in the journal WIREs Water, found that the kind of climate benefits provided by a species like the beaver — categorized as “low-tech process-based stream restoration” — are “rapidly gaining traction in the face of looming climate and biodiversity crises.”

“If you just put a beaver there and let it do its thing, the number of ecosystem services they provide to help with climate change, it’s huge,” Fairfax said in a phone interview last week.

“It’s also less expensive: Beavers are free.”

Yes they are. They’re born free and they have a right to live free. And not be dropped in parachutes over every scarred mistake this country has made. But that’s just me.

They are also abundant, which poses a unique challenge for the landscape-altering mammal both in North America and elsewhere.

For centuries, Eurocentric cultures valued beaver only for their pelts, and they were hunted to fractions of their natural populations across their traditional range, according to researchers.

As human settlement encroached upon streams and wetlands, beaver populations crashed again by as much as 90 percent, even as they continued to thrive in wild areas and pockets of protected habitat. Their dam-building ways also earned them a reputation as pests, especially to farmers.

Fairfax noted that while restoring public acceptance is a gradual process, wildlife managers have come to value the animals for their role in creating fire protection.

She characterized such natural adaptation measures as “low-hanging fruit” — meaning it requires virtually no effort on the part of those seeking fire protection. “Wildfires in California are getting out of control year after year, so people are saying, ‘You know, I’ll take the flooding if it means I won’t burn,” Fairfax said.

Good point. But of course people don’t have to “Take flooding”. They have to “Address flooding”. Just like they fix a flat tire on the way home from the feed mart. If you can fix a fence you can fix a flow device. We need to think of them more as investments in our landscape and less as curiosities. I’m dreaming of the day when insurance even reimburses you for properly installing one.

“I’m happy to see people going out of the traditional disaster mode and taking a chance on beavers,” she added.

In Oregon, the nonprofit organization Beaver Works has promoted beaver swamps as a critical habitat for other species such as deer, elk, fish and songbirds that also provides cool riparian environments during hot days. “Without these ponds and channels — without the beaver — wildlife habitat on high desert landscapes becomes increasingly scarce which accelerates with climate change,” the group states on its website.

California recently approved a specialized license plate program sought by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom that should yield more than $1.6 million during the next fiscal year and $1.4 million annually thereafter for climate resilience through beaver habitat restoration. When introducing the proposal in May, Newsom characterized the beaver “an untapped, creative, climate-solving hero.”