It appears we have devolved such that a single year’s rainfall decides to come in a matter of days. You look out the window at another wet day, you start to think, “GEE that’s a lot of clean water falling from the sky that will go down the streets and gutters and storm drains right out to the bay”.
And you want that water out of your way, of course, and off your driveway and lawns and schoolyards so you’re grateful for the drains and the pavement. But you also have in the back of your head this nagging sensation that “I bet we’re going to miss that water in July when we the entire Bay Area is looking like dehydrated fruit” Or maybe “Burning up entirely.”
Then one suddenly has a thought “Hey wouldn’t it be cool if there was some way to keep that water in the communities where it’s needed before it disappears out to sea? Like some kind of natural little water holding structures that slowed things down and helped the water seep into the soil and soak into the ground where it can stay cool til we need it later?“.
I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve read that we used to have lots and lots of these things that made little ponds all along our streams. Like some kind of natural champagne fountain constantly trickling down all the stacked glasses so that no cup ever went dry even when it was far, far away from the original bottle.
Now this makes more sense. For three whole days in a row there was zero new beaver stories on my feed. Which is odd because at this time of year there are usually plenty – usually the season for lots of cities to worry about trapping. Today there are a bundle all at once, like a hose suddenly unkinked and water is gushing out in a burst. Here’s the best.
A growing group of ecologists, hydrologists, landscape architects, urban planners and environmental engineers—essentially water detectives—are pursuing transformational change, starting from a place of respect for water’s agency and systems. Instead of asking only, ‘What do we want?’ They are also asking, ‘What does water want?’” When filled-in wetlands flood during events such as the torrential 2017 rains in Houston, Texas, researchers realized that, sooner or later, water always wins. Rather than trying to control every molecule, they are instead making space for water along its path, to reduce damage to people’s lives.
Love that paragraph and I know the answer. Beavers. Water wants beavers. Lots and lots of beavers.
Taking a holistic approach is also paying off in Washington state and in the United Kingdom, where people are allowing beavers space for their water needs. The rodents in turn protect people from droughts, wildfires and floods. Before people killed the majority of beavers, North America and Europe were much boggier, thanks to beaver dams that slowed water on the land, which gave the animals a wider area to travel, safe from land predators. Before the arrival of the Europeans, 10% of North America was covered in beaver-created, ecologically diverse wetlands.
Environmental scientist Benjamin Dittbrenner, at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, studied the work of beavers that were relocated from human-settled areas into wilder locations in Washington state. In the first year after relocation, beaver ponds created an average of 75 times more surface and groundwater storage per 100 metres of stream than did the control site9.As snowfall decreases with climate change, such beaver-enabled water storage will become more important. Dittbrenner found that the beaver’s work would increase summer water availability by 5% in historically snowy basins. That’s about 15 million cubic metres in just one basin, he estimates—almost one-quarter of the capacity of the Tolt Reservoir that serves Seattle, Washington.
Beavers have fire-fighting skills too, says Emily Fairfax, an ecohydrologist at California State University Channel Islands in Camarillo. When beavers are allowed to repopulate stretches of stream, the widened wet zone can create an important fire break. Their ponds raise the water table beyond the stream itself, making plants less flammable because they have increased access to water.
Water wants lots and lots of these.
And beavers can actually help to prevent flooding. Their dams slow water, so it trickles out over an extended period of time, reducing peak flows that have been increasingly inundating streamside towns in England. Researchers from the University of Exeter, UK, found that during storms, peak flows were on average 30% lower in water leaving beaver dams than in sites without beaver dams10. These benefits held even in saturated, midwinter conditions.
Beaver ponds also help to scrub pollutants from the water and create habitats for other animals. The value for these services is around US$69,000 per square kilometre annually, says Fairfax.“If you let them just go bananas”, a beaver couple and their kits can engineer a mile of stream in a year, she says. Because beavers typically live 10 to 12 years, the value of a lifetime of work for two beavers would be $1.7 million, she says. And if we returned to having 100 million to 400 million beavers in North America, she adds, “then the numbers really start blowing up”.
Maybe that old Simon and Garfunkel song was really about water! Slow down you move to fast, You got to make the water la-ast!” Now that makes sense, Beavers knews it all along.
People applying slow-water approaches are doing what they can in the dominant economy. But Costanza says that people can better protect social capital and environmental systems by switching from GDP to metrics such as the Genuine Progress Indicator or one of “literally hundreds” of alternatives, he says.
Changing society’s fundamental goals might seem like a high bar, but some of these metrics have already been adopted by governments in Maryland, Vermont, Bhutan and New Zealand. Such shifts move beyond greenwashed versions of a circular economy and help to facilitate water detectives’ work in caring for water systems so that they can sustain human and other life.
Whenever I see an article with a headline like “Smarter ways to work with water” I am like a hound who catches a whiff and suddenly springs to attention. Or maybe one of those busy body old ladies who sit by their widow and lower their bifocals when they see that woman pulling up in the driveway with another new man.
I pay attention, but I don’t always expect to be please by the result.
People need to find better and more productive ways to become allies with water — which might mean giving it space for its processes.
With mounting climate-fuelled weather disasters, social inequality, species extinctions and resource scarcity, some corporations have adopted sustainability programmes. One term in this realm is ‘circular economy’, in which practitioners aim to increase the efficiency and reuse of resources, including water — ideally making more goods (and more money) in the process.
Okay, I admit when I saw that the author was Erica Gies I got a lot more hopeful.
Working with wildlife
Taking a holistic approach is also paying off in Washington state and in the United Kingdom, where people are allowing beavers space for their water needs. The rodents in turn protect people from droughts, wildfires and floods. Before people killed the majority of beavers, North America and Europe were much boggier, thanks to beaver dams that slowed water on the land, which gave the animals a wider area to travel, safe from land predators. Before the arrival of the Europeans, 10% of North America was covered in beaver-created, ecologically diverse wetlands.
Environmental scientist Benjamin Dittbrenner, at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, studied the work of beavers that were relocated from human-settled areas into wilder locations in Washington state. In the first year after relocation, beaver ponds created an average of 75 times more surface and groundwater storage per 100 metres of stream than did the control site9. As snowfall decreases with climate change, such beaver-enabled water storage will become more important. Dittbrenner found that the beaver’s work would increase summer water availability by 5% in historically snowy basins. That’s about 15 million cubic metres in just one basin, he estimates — almost one-quarter of the capacity of the Tolt Reservoir that serves Seattle, Washington.
I always have time to stop and enjoy a good Ben Dittbrenner reference. Yes lots of beavers doing their things all over would increase our available water. And help wildlife. And act as fire reduction. And reduce nitrogen.
But don’t listen to me.
Beavers have fire-fighting skills too, says Emily Fairfax, an ecohydrologist at California State University Channel Islands in Camarillo. When beavers are allowed to repopulate stretches of stream, the widened wet zone can create an important fire break. Their ponds raise the water table beyond the stream itself, making plants less flammable because they have increased access to water.
And beavers can actually help to prevent flooding. Their dams slow water, so it trickles out over an extended period of time, reducing peak flows that have been increasingly inundating streamside towns in England. Researchers from the University of Exeter, UK, found that during storms, peak flows were on average 30% lower in water leaving beaver dams than in sites without beaver dams10. These benefits held even in saturated, midwinter conditions.
Beaver ponds also help to scrub pollutants from the water and create habitats for other animals. The value for these services is around US$69,000 per square kilometre annually, says Fairfax. “If you let them just go bananas”, a beaver couple and their kits can engineer a mile of stream in a year, she says. Because beavers typically live 10 to 12 years, the value of a lifetime of work for two beavers would be $1.7 million, she says. And if we returned to having 100 million to 400 million beavers in North America, she adds, “then the numbers really start blowing up”.
But we love our pollution! We would so miss it! Said no one ever in the history of the world. Why not let beavers do what beavers do and start off on the right foot?
For the most part, mainstream economics doesn’t take into account the many crucial services provided by healthy, intact ecosystems: water generation, pollution mitigation, food production, crop pollination, flood protection and more.
Yup. We don’t put a price on the good things beavers do and what it actually cost us to continue killing them the way we do.. If we did it would blow our frickin’ minds.
Fall is a great time to head back to Milwakee and check on how the beaver recovery is coming along. Here and now Producer Chris Bentley recently gave a nice report on WBUR. Unfortunately it’s featured with an otter photo from Getty images which they say was sleeping “on a branch” which is the greatest possible fail. But we hope more beaver sightings will straighten them out eventually. It’s a nice 5 minute listen, enjoy.
The American beaver was once a fixture of this area, at the confluence of three rivers by the shores of Lake Michigan. Then the region’s first European residents made Milwaukee one of their main fur trading posts. They hunted and trapped beavers for their pelts, and the population plummeted.
But a few years ago, people started noticing trees along the riverbanks in the heart of downtown Milwaukee that had been gnawed down to a point — a telltale sign of a beaver.
There’s even a quick mention of our buddy Bob Boucher’s study about flooding, but then it’s back to worshiping at the trout rumors.
That’s another reason ecologists are happy to see beavers returning to urban areas. Last year, researchers at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee found beavers could substantially reduce flooding in some of the county’s most flood-prone areas.
Trout fisherman, however, worry too many beaver dams could muck up their fishing streams. But in urban Milwaukee, there’s still room for people to share the rivers with a few more beavers.
The sun eventually set on our canoe ride and we got back on shore while bats snapped up bugs over our heads.
You know how beavers are. Always ruining streams for trout. The oddest thing is that they only seem to do that in WISCONSIN. In every other state they are GOOD for trout.
Spoiled for choice is a phrase that I don’t often get to use describing beaver news. But this morning, I’m very very spoiled. Maybe its because BeaverCon 2 starts next week. Or BeaverFestival 13 starts in 17. But days. But whatever it is. I LIKE IT.
To protect Jubilee Farm, Haakenson is looking to an unlikely ally: Beavers. Because it turns out, beavers might actually offer some real protection against climate impacts like flooding and wildfires — if people can learn to live with them.
Farmers and beavers don’t often get along. Even Haakenson has had his share of conflicts with the local family of beavers who regularly turn his field into what he calls “Lake Jubilee.”
“The beavers have their goal in life and I have my goal in life,” Haakenson said. “My job is to farm and there is some friction there. But if I were to remove the beavers, more beavers would just come over because it is like a beaver paradise.”
Okay this article is about a farmer in Washington State so I bet you can already guess how it ends.Turns out the thing a farmer wants less of there is floods. And what can help with that? I’ll give you a hint. It starts with a “B”.
“It was all without beavers in mind. Without thinking about how they could affect our infrastructure, our roads, our yards, our driveways, our homes, our farms,” said Jen Vanderhoof, a senior ecologist for King County in Washington state. “They weren’t here. And we didn’t have to think about them.”
But in the last few decades, beaver populations have started to rebound — only to a fraction of their previous levels, but enough to cause trouble when they flood properties, wash away roads, or chew up trees.
“People are always like, ‘We didn’t used to have beaver problems,’ or ‘We didn’t used to have beavers and never saw beavers here before,’” said Vanderhoof. “But things are changing and they’re not going away at this point.”
“A lot of people get kind of irate about beaver dams, because beavers have one joy in life: and that is stopping water,” said Haakenson. “They probably have other ones. I’m sure they lead rich inner lives. But they really like stopping water from flowing.”
I believe I said it myself in the urban beaver handout with the title “Recess is over”. You may not have seen beavers in your creek or stream before. But you’re going to keep seeing them now. Better figure out how to live with them.
Now, as rising global temperatures make rainstorms more intense and frequent, Haakenson thinks that beavers’ ability to stop water might be able to actually help his farm.
To understand how that might work, let’s take a trip to a hypothetical creek. Like a lot of creeks, it’s just a single narrow channel. During winter storms, water rushes downstream. During summer, the creek dries up to a trickle. Climate change is making those floods and droughts even more extreme.
But here’s what happens if a beaver moves in: The beaver builds a dam, and water starts to back up into a pond. During a flood, a lot of that water can get stored in the pond, and in the soil underneath the pond, where it permeates through the ground and eventually comes out downstream. During summer droughts, when everything on the surface is usually dried up, there’s still water stored in the ground under the beaver pond, creating a lush oasis in an otherwise dry landscape.
An oasis that can even stand up to wildfire. One recent study looked at five streams that were hit by wildfires, comparing damage in areas with and without beaver dams. In every single case, the stream sections with beaver dams experienced only a third of the fire damage. All this matters, because climate change is contributing to more severe droughts, fires, and flooding, and beavers can help communities with those problems, just by doing what they do.
Ohh I sure love a beaver article that just ticks through the list of their benefits. It’s like those old movies where the smitten songwriter sits down at the piano and starts singing praise to his beloved standing at the other side of the piano. “Go, on…Please, tell me more.”
“I feel like it’s going to be the thing that eventually the farm will go under because of – flood water,” Haakenson said. “The flooding is getting worse. The beavers might actually be able to help with that.”
One study estimated that on the Snoqualmie River, more beaver dams upstream could help store over 6,000 Olympic swimming pools worth of water.
On his farm, Haakenson keeps an eye on the dam, trying to keep it from overtaking his field. But beyond that, he pretty much lets the beavers do their thing.
“There’s kind of two ways to approach nature, and one is to fight it and the other one is to try to figure out how to coexist,” Haakenson said.
As beaver populations return, more people are following that strategy: Using tools like pond levelers or fences to protect the things that matter to them, but also letting beavers be when they’re not hurting anyone.
Ohh my goodness. This article just keeps getting better and better. I better pinch myself to see if I’m dreaming.
Americans are used to a world without beavers, but that’s changing, whether we like it or not.
Sure, beavers can be frustrating. But if we can learn to get along with these giant aquatic rodents, they might even turn out to be helpful neighbors.
I don’t know. Storing cleaner water. Preventing flooding. Creating biodiversity. Removing Nitrogen. Preventing Fires. Sequesting Carbon. Raising groundwater. Would you really go SO FAR as to call them helpful?
“The Farmer and the Beaver Should be Friends!” I’m working on new lyrics right away!
d of natural little water holding structures that slowed things down and helped the water seep into the soil and soak into the ground where it can stay cool til we need it later?“.
Now, as rising global temperatures make rainstorms more intense and frequent, Haakenson thinks that beavers’ ability to stop water might be able to actually help his farm. 
