It’s here! It’s HERE! The real president’s day! If you missed the memorial last night you should really watch, and assuming anyone has time amid all the champagne corks popping, there’s some excellent beaver news for us to follow.
The beaver is often thought of as an industrious construction expert with instinctive engineering skills that creates dams capable of holding back the flow of water in Iowa’s creeks and streams.
For some, this skill is not as welcome as you may think. When a beaver’s dam backs water into a row crop field during a weather event or wet season, farmers are not their biggest fans. In addition, beavers have a voracious appetite for almost anything that grows, including corn. The combined nuisance of crop pilferage and field flooding creates a negative perception of beavers among most farmers.
However, beavers do play an important role in creating habitat for other wetlands creatures through the creation of natural ponds. And the slowing of water flow is one potential remedy for erosion and downstream nutrient transport issues facing Iowa. An additional upside of beaver dams is there is no construction or implementation cost for the farmer.
Finding a balance between these potential conservation benefits while paying attention to farming interests may be a daunting task, but as with most complex challenges, the first step is gathering data for analysis.
Oh don’t you just love it when farmers scratch their heads and say “Gosh that tarnation beaver dam might just be savin’ the water I need!” I have to admit I’m a big fan of these moments where the pest becomes popular. Aren’t you?
In Iowa, beaver dams are protected from destruction or demolition, unless it is done to protect the owner’s property. During a 2018 Iowa Learning Farms conservation listening session with farmers participating in watershed improvement projects, one farmer related a story about how they had handled a beaver dam issue on his farm.
He remarked that after the beavers were forcefully encouraged to move a dam downstream to reduce field flooding, he participated in nitrate testing above and below their newly constructed dam. To his amazement, the nitrate levels in the water were measured to be some 90% lower below the dam than above.
“Practices which help to move water off cropland as quickly as possible have helped farmers increase yields and put more acres into production, but in many cases at the cost of topsoil and nutrient loss to our waterways,” Beck says.
“There has been tremendous effort invested in research and practice aimed at conserving soil, and slowing or preventing nutrients from degrading water quality,” he says. “One area that hasn’t had a lot of critical study in Iowa is the potential efficacy of beaver dams as a conservation practice or structure that could naturally contribute to the recovery of compromised waterways.”
Get the hell out! You mean the report that beaver dams remove 41% of nitrates is actually true! Who cam believe it?
“We hope to be able to quantify the impacts to water quality provided by beaver dams,” Beck says. “We do understand that these creatures don’t always put their dams in the most beneficial sites from a farmer’s perspective. Finding measurable factors that can be analyzed from a cost-benefit angle may influence how farmers view and interact with beavers in their area.”
The likelihood of finding the perfect location for every beaver dam — one which maximizes benefits to all — is relatively low. However, reaching a better understanding of how these natural structures fit into a multifaceted approach to water quality improvement and conservation may contribute to overall progress toward statewide nutrient reduction goals.
Well that sounds like an EXCELLENT research project. I can’t wait for you to reconfirm the results they found in every other state and Canada. Now I have an inauguration to go watch.
I can’t believe how much I need this.
There is nothing more life-giving than flowing water in a land of little rain. And the rivers of desert West Texas are a lifeline not only for humankind, but for diverse wildlife. The Rio Grande and its tributaries sustain creatures found nowhere else on Earth – from endangered mussels to dozens of native fish species.
Of course you and I know a million reasons California should care about beavers, but of course the people who most need to be there and learn why they matter are people who don’t yet think they matter, so we have to be pretty careful about not appearing to preach to the choir.
