Category: Beavers and climate change

LET THE RODENT DO THE WORK

When you are trying to solve a problem you think you understand you are pretty controlling about who you ask to help you, or even IF you ask for help at all. “I got this” you mutter over and over as you attempt your rescue. But there comes a certain point at which things are so messed up beyond your control that you will accept help from anyone.

ANYONE.

Which is how I got invited to speak at the ca state parks conference many years ago. Many parks were closed. They were all hemorrhaging money and someone said good lord let that beaver lady talk. she’s free and she can’t make things any worse.

Keep that in mind as you read what’s happening in the UK. Wales has just released beavers and England made a plan to release a whole lot of them. That’s how bad the environment has gotten across the pond. They are willing to try anything.

Iolo Williams on return of Dyfi estuary beavers

It comes after more than 15 years of work by the Welsh Beaver Project, which had been investigating the feasibility of reintroduction in Wales.

A father and son pair are now living at Cors Dyfi Nature Reserve, with the mother expected to join her family in a few weeks.

The officially-licensed beavers were released by the naturalist and television presenter, Iolo Williams, into a purpose-built enclosure on the reserve.

“It was a real honour to be asked to help release the beavers at Cors Dyfi. Finally, after more than four centuries, these wonderful animals are back where they belong and I’m sure they will prove to be as big an attraction as their osprey neighbours,” he said.

Hurray for Wales! Who has been waiting a dam long time to fix the sins of their fathers! And hurray for this:

Record numbers of beavers are being introduced to the UK

With the constant threat of climate change, conservationists are keen to find new, natural and cost-efficient ways of mitigating environmental disasters. Beavers could be the answer.

Earlier this year, beavers were introduced to the South Downs, and more releases are being planned in Dorset, Derbyshire, the Isle of Wight, Nottinghamshire and Montgomeryshire.

Derek Crawley, lead author of the Mammal Society’s Atlas of the Mammals of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, says, ‘While the impact of beaver extinction wasn’t noted because we weren’t aware of their true value hundreds of years ago, bringing them back will change the landscape as we know it. Beavers bring many ecosystems together and that will offer a wider range of ecological services.’

Turns out all you need is a problem bad enough and anything looks like a solution. Sure we are mucking the planet at an amazing rate and destroying an ecosystem balance that is hanging by a thread. But maybe the rodent can help?

Dams decrease the impacts of floods by up to 60% by reducing water flow. The same mechanism is also a solution for drought periods where water in pools can be utilised. Both are helpful for many towns and cities which are prone to floods and droughts.

Another huge benefit of beaver dams and pools is their ability to capture carbon. The dams hold back silt, which locks up carbon and new plant growth in the surrounding area and forms a carbon sink.

Native trees such as willow or alder evolved alongside beavers for millions of years. When gnawed on by beavers, they quickly regrow from felled stems or cuttings. This process thins trees and allows space for other plants to grow in the area, creating a rich and diverse ecosystem.

I for one cannot wait to see the art that Lizzie Harper of Wales generates when she encounters beavers for the first time.

THE FUTURE OF CALIFORNIA’S DRINKING WATER

heidi08 Beavers and climate change, Beavers and groundwater, Beavers and water March 25, 2021

Some headlines are more equal than others.

You can imagine how excited I was when Bob Kobres sent me this article in phys.org. A discussion of drinking water from the smartest minds at Stanford talking about what would save us. Of course I had dramatic notions of what it was going to say about climate change and fires and recharging the aquifer.

Imagine how surprised I was to see what was never mentioned.

The future of America’s drinking water

In 2020 wildfires ravaged more than 10 million acres of land across California, Oregon and Washington, making it the largest fire season in modern history. Across the country, hurricanes over Atlantic waters yielded a record-breaking number of storms.

While two very different kinds of natural disasters, scientists say they were spurred by a common catalyst—climate change—and that both also threaten drinking water supplies. As the nation already wrestles with water shortages, contamination and aging infrastructure, experts warn more frequent supercharged climate-induced events will exacerbate the pressing issue of safe drinking water.

Gosh fires and climate change sound like big dam problems. I wonder what can possibly help get us through this?

Whether it’s floods, fires, storms, droughts or sea level rise, climate impacts have a direct influence on water supplies. What types of climate mitigation policies should the Biden team enact to protect drinking water?

Marcus: Grants and low-cost financing for community preparedness, especially for underserved communities, to adapt and plan for climate impacts would make a tremendous difference. The federal government should be doing leading-edge research, technology development and dispersion for lower-cost sensor and treatment systems for drinking water. Finally, the administration can explicitly make drinking water its highest priority for research and development, funding, and updating regulations based upon science.

Ajami: Water has to be the central part of both climate mitigation and adaptation discussions. Today we are facing many challenges that are the consequence of our approach to securing water and energy resources over the 20th century, building infrastructure networks under the assumption of abundance and overlooking inherent environmental interlinks. Source protection, demand management and public engagement strategies should be at the center of any climate policy.

Wow these women sound really smart. I’m sure they know all about that animal that builds dams to save water right? I mean I’m sure beavers are among the many sound solutions they can access to solve the issue of course?

Groundwater supplies drinking water to 99 percent of rural populations, but overpumping has led to aquifer depletion and water contamination. What federal and state actions can alleviate growing pressures on groundwater?

Knight: We need to change our approach to land use planning by recognizing that the most valuable use for some land is to become a site for managed recharge of the underlying groundwater system. Getting more water into regions below the ground increases the amount of stored water and can help prevent subsidence. The challenge is identifying the optimal locations for recharge zoning and requires seeing below the ground to find coarse-grained materials, such as sand and gravel, that can act as fast paths to move the water from where it is at the surface to the required depths for recharge. This is an area of work I’m currently focused on and it presents great potential to replenish and grow groundwater reserves.

Ajami: I see our groundwater supplies as our social security system; we all contribute and withdraw from it at different times. Unless we collectively contribute to it and protect it from degradation and contamination, there will be none left for future generations to draw from. I believe collaborative governance and land use management are the two most important parts of achieving groundwater sustainability, and neither can work without reliable data sources and accounting mechanisms.

Any minute now I’m sure they’ll talk about beavers. Right?

Well no. If you were holding your breath waiting for them to mention the “B” word you’d have passed out by now and be long dead before it ever happened. Of course I couldn’t let that stand so I wrote these researchers about the difference beavers make in fire resilience, water storage and mitigating climate change. And then suggested they check out what our great speakers at the beaver summit had to say about these subjects.

Two wrote back that they were very interested and would check it out. Felicia said she’s going to attend for as much of it as she can. Riley says she is extremely cool and used to be the head of the SF EPA and they go way back. So I had to find out more. See for yourself.

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A YEAR OF BEAVER SEMINARS FROM ASWM

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact, Beavers and climate change, Who's saving beavers now? January 26, 2021

ASWM is the association for State Wetlands Managers. It’s a national non-profit group that webinars and certifications for river stewards across the country. They are a remarkable resource that is mostly free to access. And they just posted the four webinars about beavers and wetlands from 2020. Of course every one starts with OUR PHOTO because we are the beavers for the ages.

2020 Beavers and Wetland Restoration Webinars

The Association of State Wetland Managers (ASWM) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) have collaborated to develop a series of webinars introducing the topic of restoration of aquatic ecosystems through the reintroduction of beavers, the use of beaver dam analogues (BDAs) or restoration designed to attract beavers to an area to contribute to changing hydrology and restoring ecosystem services. This webinar series has been planned by a national workgroup of beaver restoration experts and webinars are presented by expert practitioners, managers and researchers working in the field. The webinar series will provide four webinars in 2020 and an additional two webinars in 2021, covering the basics of beaver restoration and continuing through implementation challenges and ways to encourage beaver restoration projects.

There were four webinars in 2020 and more coming soon. Here the four from last year, each one is worth your time.

Webinar #1: The History of Beaver and the Ecosystem Services They Provide

PRESENTERS

Kent Sorenson, Habitat Restoration Biologist, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources
Amy Chadwick, Lead Ecologist, Great West Engineering

This first webinar in the Association of State Wetland Managers (ASWM) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) co-hosted six-part webinar series on beaver restoration provided the historical background of beaver on the land and the impacts from loss of beaver (through various hunting, trapping and removal activities) in terms of hydrology. The webinar shared what valley bottoms can be with restoration of hydrology and the role that beavers and beaver dam analogs (BDAs) can play in that restoration. The webinar explained the Stage Zero concept and unpack the challenges created by common practices that have been restoring streams to their first point of failure.

Webinar #2: Identifying Where to Place Beavers and When to Use Beaver Mimicry for Low Tech Restoration in the Arid West

PRESENTER

Joe Wheaton, Associate Professor, Utah State University

This second webinar in the ASWM-BLM Beaver Restoration Webinar Series focused on making decisions about where beaver restoration and/or the use of beaver dam analogs (BDA) can have the greatest positive and least negative impacts. Understanding that beaver restoration is not well-suited for all contexts and purposes, this webinar discussed risk assessment and introduce participants to the primary elements required to assess the efficacy of beaver projects for specific watersheds and sites. The webinar covered how data can be used to make decisions about different kinds of flow devices and when beaver mimicry/BDAs make more sense. The webinar included a demonstration of Utah State University’s Beaver Restoration Assessment Tool (BRAT), a model that helps planners assess key parameters (such as human interaction, hydrological setting, etc.) essential to beaver work. The webinar ended with discussion about the importance of post-construction monitoring.

Webinar #3: Case Studies of Long-term Changes from Beaver Restoration Activities

PRESENTERS

• Ellen Wohl, Colorado State University
• Nick Bouwes, Utah State University

This third webinar in the ASWM-BLM Beaver Restoration Webinar Series focused on the long-term changes in riverscapes that result from beaver restoration. Where intense stream restoration is needed, people are identifying low-tech process-based methods that combine the management of grazing, beaver and other approaches that engage processes to create self-sustaining solutions. Understanding the dynamic nature of these systems is important to understanding where and how they can be useful. The webinar shared case studies of work completed, focusing on the use of beaver to restore riverscapes.

Webinar #4: Addressing Common Barriers and Objections to Beaver Restoration Work

PRESENTERS

Wally MacFarlane, Utah State University
Justin Jimenez, Bureau of Land Management

This fourth webinar in the ASWM-BLM Beaver Restoration Webinar Series focused on common barriers to beaver restoration and beaver dam analog (BDA) work and when/how these barriers can be overcome. Common local landowner concerns include the taking of water from downstream water users, the potential for infrastructure damage, and a general intolerance for dam building activities. Common barriers to project success include long delays associated with the NEPA process and inability to sustain strong, diverse and long-lasting project partners. This webinar provided case studies from Utah and Idaho and will provide insights on best management practices for successful beaver restoration and BDA work.

That should keep you busy for this week. And convince you to sign up for Workshop 5 which is next week.

Webinar #5: Coalition Building for Beaver Based Stream and Wetland Restoration Success

PRESENTERS

Chris Jordan, NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center
Alexa Whipple, Methow Beaver Project
Natalie Arroyo

This fifth webinar in the ASWM-BLM Beaver Restoration Webinar Series focuses on how coalition building is essential to advancing the practice of process-based stream and floodplain restoration by helping the regulatory environment be responsive to the evolving understanding around functioning, intact riverscapes. Intentional and inclusive outreach efforts and creative partnerships are critical to achieving positive restoration outcomes. Restoring floodplains based on mimicking beaver dam inundated wetlands and their inherent complexity is a paradigm shift for the stream and wetland restoration community. Practitioners are eager to engage and the science community has jumped in to lead on methods for restoration, evaluation, and assessment. However, the regulatory community, both the formal statutory authority content and the interpretation of these regulations to allow on-the-ground restoration actions, has not seen the same degree of development. As such, a growing gap between natural process-based restoration methods and the legal authority for their implementation threatens to stall the vital progress science-based stream restoration is making. Cultural change is necessary to bridge this gap and generate the required broad understanding and adoption of novel best practices. Only through inclusive coalitions building will it be possible to develop commonly held values around functioning, process-based, vibrant ecosystems that support the natural and human ecologies essential for resilient ecosystems.

MAYBE PLAN ‘B’ SHOULD BE PLAN ‘BEAVER’

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Beaver ecological impact, Beavers and climate change January 24, 2021

It’s fairly good to be me at the moment, and being you got a whole lot better this week. I heard encouraging things from the web designer for the California beaver Summit yesterday, and had great fun watching this dynamic presentation from the good folks at the Scotts Valley Watershed Council. You really should make time for this epic story. They did and continue to do an unbelievable amount of work.

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Aren’t they wonderful? They get all kinds of folk marching to their particular beat. I’m so impressed. They’ve made a significant difference not only for beavers but for the river, the groundwater, the fish, the birds and the climate!

And there’s more good news on the climate change front coming. You just wait,

Wildlife: A Crucial Piece of the Puzzle in the Fight Against Climate Change

Wildlife and the diversity of species within an ecosystem increases an ecosystem’s ability to store carbon, making wildlife’s role in the fight against climate change indispensable. Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are balanced by the natural movement of carbon through certain ecosystems, during which CO2 is absorbed by plants, sediments or the surface of the ocean. From there, it is stored for long periods of time. The top five ecosystems for storing carbon per unit of area are tundra, seagrass, mangrove forests, salt marshes and forests. In the United States, temperate and boreal forests absorb enough carbon to decrease national annual net emissions by 11%. But without wildlife, ecosystems cannot operate at the maximum level to fight climate change.

Beavers, another keystone species often thought of as an ecosystem engineer for their roles creating habitat through dam building, help and hurt in the fight against climate change. The organic material in their dams store carbon and the dams. The organic material in their dams store carbon and the dams filter out pollution and reduce floods and the spread of wildfires. Climate change is causing more precipitation to fall as rain rather than snow, leading to more flooding and less water availability downstream in the summer. The presence of beaver dams at higher elevations can slow down this type of water flow and avert early runoff, much like snow does.

Of course any article about climate change and beavers can’t finish without at least a mention of the horrors beavers are creating in the tundra, making habitat for all those displaced species that are driver out of lower elevations by fire and drought. Sure. Okay. But believe you me, if you the planet is going to be ravaged by climate change, you are better off having plenty of beavers around to help.

EMILY EDUCATES CALIFORNIA

heidi08 Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Fire Prevention, Beavers and water January 18, 2021

Happy last Trump-Monday! The very air hums with anticipation. Or maybe that’s the virus, just waiting for us to get on with it already. Today is a particularly good day to be thankful that there are still a few humans in Southern California that aren’t infected, and this one we are very very happy about.

UC California Online Naturalist Series

Dr. Emily Fairfax, Assistant Professor, California State University Channel Islands. Dr. Fairfax leads the BEAVS Research Group: Beavers, Ecohydrology, and Visual Storytelling.

Her current research focuses on the ecohydrology of riparian areas, particularly those that have been impacted by beaver damming. Dr. Fairfax uses a combination of remote sensing, modeling, and field to work understand how beaver damming changes these landscapes and on what timescales those changes operate. In addition to learning about beavers and Dr. Fairfax’s research, participants in this CONES will have an opportunity to practice finding signs of beaver in both on ground photos and in satellite images.

So Emily”s online course goes active tomorrow at noon, and she teaches naturalists across California why beavers matter. If you want to register you can still sign up here:

CONES January 19: Beavers and Healthy Ecosystems

Jan 19, 2021 12:00 PM in Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Here’s something else to look forward to as we remember what can help California make its way in a drying world.

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Our much beloved festival artist Amelia Hunter sent her rough sketch of what she’s thinking of for the summit logo. I’m practically panting in anticipation.