We live vicariously.
Since Martinez no long has a thriving beaver population, I get a little thrill from hearing about the fairfield beavers, or the Sonoma beavers. or the Napa beavers. We love to learn about beavers and their reception from afar. It’s the second best thing to being there.
And when England proclaims that beavers should be reintroduced or Oregon argues why beavers matter and their lives should be protected on public lands, well we live vicariously through that too. This one is from Quinn Read, the policy director for the Center for biological diversity in Oregon.
Who knew that beavers — those industrious, buck-toothed, mutant-tailed rodents — would still have such a rough go of it in Oregon?
We are the Beaver State. There’s even a beaver on our state flag. (Sure, it’s on the back of the flag, but it’s there.) Yet beavers are classified by law as predators and “furbearers,” a terrible moniker that, if applied to other species, would define salmon as meat-tubes and mule deer as antler-holders. This means beavers can be hunted and trapped across Oregon with few restrictions.
Refill that coffee cup, You just know this is going to be good.
And recently the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission rejected a petition that would have given beavers a break and closed federal public lands to commercial and recreational hunting and trapping.
Beavers rival humans in their ability to shape the landscape. Fortunately for us they do a much better job of it. In fact, we’ve spent untold millions of dollars trying to recreate what beavers do naturally.
Wetlands restored or created by beavers help mitigate the harmful impacts of climate change. Dams and ponds keep water on the landscape longer, slow water flows to prevent erosion and decrease flood damage, replenish the water table and even trap carbon.
Nice! Do trappers mitigate climate change or save water? No they do not. Say what you want about the age old skill passed on from father to son but trappers don’t increase biodiversity OR prevent erosion.
So beavers win.
During the commission’s Nov. 13 hearing, no one denied the important role beavers play in restoring and maintaining healthy ecosystems. But the group refused to have a science-based discussion on the impact of hunting and trapping on beavers and their activities.
Instead, the commission created a workgroup with a vague direction to analyze and provide guidance on beaver management without a timeline or any anticipated rulemaking. This decision ignores the fact that there is already a beaver workgroup and it hasn’t actually worked. It remains to be seen how or if this process will be different.
Beavers deserve better from the Beaver State.
The commission must be held accountable for reforming beaver management, and it must do so on a reasonable timeline. It must consider beavers in the context of climate change, the extinction crisis and water pollution and scarcity. And it cannot ignore the impact of hunting and trapping, which is under the commission’s direct authority to regulate.
No it can’t. Nor should it. Obviously public lands need to be preserved in a way that protects the interest of the greatest public good. Let’s see, in all of Oregon are their more trappers or people who drink water?
I’ll wait while you do the math.
If this commission won’t do its job, it’s incumbent upon Gov. Kate Brown to appoint commissioners who will. We need a commission that listens to science, respects the public and prioritizes conservation.
Today, with climate change bearing down on us in the form of extreme droughts, wildfires and floods, we understand that we cannot afford to turn our backs on such an important ally.
AMEN! I hope that makes the department heads squirm uncomfortably. Beavers will never win until it is in bureaucrats best interest to let the win. And I’d say columns like this help enormously. Great work Quinn.
It’s Saturday. Let’s have some more vicarious living from our friends in San Luis Obispo.
Spotting a beaver-made dam is like walking into another world, according to Audrey Taub.
“You’re walking through this sandy-dry arid environment, and then all of a sudden it’s green, lush, and full of birdsong and herons. You can even see the fish and frogs,” Taub said. “Something big is happening here.”
Taub founded the San Luis Obispo County Beaver Brigade, a local advocacy group whose efforts include raising awareness about beavers in the county and educating the community about how beavers benefit wetland habitats.
Well, well, well. This may require a second cup of coffee. And a donut. Audrey is our friend from way back and SLO is rapidly becoming the Martinez of the next generation.
The brigade is now working with Emily Fairfax, an assistant professor of environmental science and resource management at California State University Channel Islands.
Fairfax and Taub connected because Fairfax was moving to California from Colorado and wanted to find areas with beaver populations to study. She’s studied beavers her entire academic career.
A Google search led her to the Beaver Brigade, and now Fairfax studies SLO County beavers and leads educational walks to limited groups—for the time being.
Through her research thus far, Fairfax found that beavers have been present in the Paso Robles region of the Salinas River since 2013. In that time, 59 unique dams have been fairly active.
Biodiversity First! developed a university-funded grant opportunity for Fairfax and a group of students to study beaver complexes in the upper Salinas River through 2021. The grant, “Beavers, Climate Change, and Ecosystem Resilience,” will result in the first peer-reviewed study of beaver habitat in San Luis Obispo County.
This is the kind of story you want to tell your children every Christmas. Regular people banding together to make a difference for beavers and the world.
In Southern and Central California and in the Salina River, especially, Fairfax said, the most pressing benefits of beavers is their ability to create wetland habitats that are resistant to stressors like droughts and wildfires.
“The way that beavers dig channels around the landscape, ultimately, makes it so that these patches in the landscape can withstand droughts and fires because it’s so soggy. It just holds a lot of water there and keeps it green and lush even when the rest of the landscape has been put into a degraded and stressed-out state,” she said.
Over the next year, Fairfax and her student group are hoping to continue locating beaver dams, identify the number of beavers in the area, understand their activity in the upper Salinas River, observe beaver activity during droughts, and study water quality.
Hurray! Beavers get way more respect if you attach a scientist to them. It’s not the way it should be, of course. But it’s the way it is. That works because any persuasive power that can help us keep beavers on the landscape is GOOD. In Martinez it was voters and their children. But in SLO it might be science.
Leave no bell unrung.
