THE BEAVER POND ALGORITHM

I woke up this morning to see that Kylie sold her annoying HCN beavers ruining the artic article to the atlantic. Well, bully for her. They took out most of the trapping stuff and left in the nice paragraph about biodiversity. Good. But we need to talk about something else this morning.

Lynker Partnership Tracks Wetland & Beaver Pond Changes Using Cutting Edge Technology

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) tracks the status and trends of wetlands across the United States. The National Wetlands Inventory (NWI), maintained by USFWS, is a nation-wide map of wetlands that has been created over several decades by multiple different mapping partners. The dataset is incredibly valuable, but does not track changes over time and the age of the data is variable across the West.

This is the first project of its kind, wherein the research team will use state-of-the-art remote sensing and machine learning techniques to map the extent of wetlands as well as the presence of beaver ponds and their changes over time. The mapping and analysis will be carried out using high resolution 4-band aerial photography from the National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) and LiDAR acquired by the government between 2006 and 2021. (more…)

THE RARE HCN ARTICLE WORTH IGNORING

As a rule I have a strict YES policy about posting beaver articles from High Country News. After all, they are generally more responsible and thorough than other news souces, and they are very environmental in their focus. Plus they made BEN GOLDFARB which is a very wonderful achievement. And they boasted the very first truly inspiring beaver article I ever read back in 2009. It remains my gold standard of all beaver articles.

So I won’t be writing at all today about the whining debasement from the new intern (Kylie Mohr) there that will never replace you-know-who. She starts the article with a profile about the new fascination for beaver trapping in the area. because of HATS and all the beaver slums that have appeared where they never used to be. I won’t even point out how horrifically wrong she is about beavers causing giardia and ruining the drinking water. What would be the point? (more…)

WHY I LOVE BEN GOLDFARB

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Beavers and climate change February 14, 2022

FINALLY! When this report caught my eye I nearly wept with joy! My very heart leaped like a young salmon over a beaver dam! Thank the Gods for Ben Goldfarb. Thank everyone who made this happen. I am soo soo sick of negative news about beaver gangs raving the arctic I could just about burst.

Beavers Move Into the Arctic

The Arctic is warming roughly twice as fast as much of the globe and some species are already moving toward the poles in search of new habitat. And as beavers move north into the Arctic these big rodents known as “ecosystem engineers” are bringing big changes to the landscape. Ben Goldfarb is the author of Eager: the Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter and joins Living on Earth’s Jenni Doering to discuss the concerns and benefits of beavers in the Arctic.

COPING WITH CLIMATE CHANGE REQUIRES BEAVERS

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact, Beavers and climate change January 22, 2022

There are news outlets and there are NEWS OUTLETS. The Conversation is a very powerful website that is paid for by academic institutions and allows professors to publish under a media commons license which means that any news agency is free to reprint it without any credit or payment. That makes it very very popular. So you can imagine how happy I was to see this yesterday. It has literally spawned headlines from Alamo to St Ives.

Beavers offer lessons about managing water in a changing climate, whether the challenge is drought or floods

As climate change causes extreme storms in some areas and intense drought in others, scientists are finding that beavers’ small-scale natural interventions are valuable. In dry areas, beaver ponds restore moisture to the soil; in wet zones, their dams and ponds can help to slow floodwaters. These ecological services are so useful that land managers are translocating beavers in the U.S. and the United Kingdom to help restore ecosystems and make them more resilient to climate change. (more…)

BEAVERS ARE MAD AS HELL, AND WE’RE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact, Beavers and climate change January 18, 2022

Have you see that new movie on netflix where beavers destroy the earth by hitting it with a comet? You missed it? Trust me it’s coming soon. Apparently the ever-loving world cannot get enough of the beavers causing climate change meme. NPR had to get in on the fun. Of course since they’re very ivy league and intellectual they brought in a top beaver scientist who knew all about how salmon couldn’t get over dams and stuff.

FROM ENGLAND.

Beavers have been moving into the Arctic, accelerating the effects of climate change

NPR’s Sacha Pfeiffer speaks with Helen Wheeler, a wildlife ecologist from Anglia Ruskin University in the U.K., on the impacts beavers are having as they move into the Arctic tundra.

For years now, scientists have been documenting the somewhat mysterious spread of a new species into the Arctic, beavers. They’re sometimes called nature’s engineers for the way they change the shape of streams and rivers and ponds. Those changes can accelerate the effects of climate change, since the warmth of the ponds the beavers create with their dams can thaw the frozen ground below. They may also be affecting the environment in other ways. Helen Wheeler is a wildlife ecologist at Anglia Ruskin University in the U.K. She’s researching the impact of beavers on indigenous communities and local ecosystems in Canada. She joins us from Cambridge, England. Hi and welcome. (more…)