Please join with 250 non-profit organizations, scientists and advocates who submitted this letter to President Biden on February 27, 2023 asking for an Executive Order to protect beaver on our federally managed public lands as a proactive emergency climate response!
This petition will close on May 31, 2023 and be prepared for submission to the Biden Administration.
Ending beaver trapping and hunting on our federally managed public lands is a nature-based climate solution that will help restore many of our streams and wetlands, and bring real, tangible benefits to our communities.
Drought, floods, wildfires, and crashing fish and wildlife populations are no longer confined to small areas but spill across state boundaries. State wildlife agencies have failed to act in our best collective interest as they continue to narrowly focus on select recreational user groups even as our human and wild communities are increasingly stressed by the accelerating impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss. It is time for action at the national level.
Benefits include: More dependable water for cities, towns, farms and ranches; natural water filtration systems resulting in improved water quality; natural firebreaks creating refuges for wildlife during wildfires and protecting water quality post fire; temporary surface and groundwater storage that dampens flood peaks and improves stream flows during droughts; abundant quality fish and wildlife habitat; and drawdown of atmospheric carbon as wetland habitat expands.
Beavers can help us meet the challenges before us but only if we protect them. It is time to ask the President to take action as a matter of national security. Time is of the essence.
Matt Kaminski stood on a road scarcely higher than the floodplain, glassy pools on all sides stretched out like something from a dream. In the distance, a storm lumbered over the Coast Ranges.
The marsh all around him, Kaminski said, was a window into the Central Valley’s past. Back then, the waterways that twist down from the Sierra Nevada mountains would flood unrestricted by the current thicket of dams, canals and levees.
The more you know about rivers, the less confidence you have in a mapmaker’s static squiggle. Kaminski, a biologist from Ducks Unlimited who helps oversee the floodplain and, when it dries out, the grasslands, explained that when “the state of California was wild, it had a lot more wetlands.”
During the rainiest years, the whole valley could transform into an enormous, shallow sea. Floodwaters would spread over the landscape and percolate through the soil into the aquifers beneath. Little aquatic creatures would make their home in the tules and migrating birds would stop to gorge on their long journeys in the spring and fall. The Valley oaks and Fremont cottonwoods would rise, improbably, out of the shallows.
That appeared to be happening just east of Gustine in Merced County, as yet another storm from the tropics approached the valley: The San Joaquin River seemed to spread out and create an ephemeral wetland, a natural process.
But Kaminski pointed to the edge of the water, where three concrete slabs jutted into the marsh, and little slats of wood controlled the flow under the dirt road to the other side.
This marsh hadn’t flooded on its own.
Instead, the wetland was an artifice on top of an artifice. Powerful California interests “reclaimed” the Central Valley’s wetlands in the 19th and early 20th centuries, draining them for agricultural use and transforming the landscape.
The vast majority of the state’s marshes are gone.
But in little pockets in the state, people like Kaminski are reworking the land yet again to bring back a version of California’s past, in service of the future. By allowing rivers to spread out, flows are diverted from downstream communities, replenishing groundwater and staving off unwanted floods.
“These wetlands,” Kaminski likes to say, “act as a sponge.”
And the state agreed. In September, the California Wildlife Conservation Board earmarked $40 million for the nonprofit River Partners to spend on similar projects in the San Joaquin Valley.
But in the governor’s proposed budget released in January, that funding was axed. The news came early in the procession of climate-change-fueled winter storms that have led to staggering snowpack in the Sierra, extensive flooding throughout the state and more than 30 deaths. Facing a budget shortfall, Gov. Gavin Newsom had moved to kneecap efforts to use the historical floodplain as a way to recharge groundwater and to prevent disasters in human-occupied areas.
“In the San Joaquin Valley, we’ve got a product pipeline of about $200 million worth of floodplain expansion projects that are ready to go,” said Julie Rentner, president of River Partners. But the proposed budget, she said, “has zero dollars to be used towards that pipeline.”
Rentner said that habitat restoration cannot wait.
Well I certainly agree that habitat restoration cannot wait! But I still don’t understand why they didn’t mention our potential to do much of this fixing up for free? We’re certainly at work in the San Joaquin River Ecological Reserve! We got some good press on the BBC though:
Credit: Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, David Ljungberg
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have developed a new method that can easily purify contaminated water using a cellulose-based material. This discovery could have implications for countries with poor water treatment technologies and combat the widespread problem of toxic dye discharge from the textile industry.
Clean water is a prerequisite for our health and living environment, but far from a given for everyone. According to the World Health Organization, WHO, there are currently over two billion people living with limited or no access to clean water.
This global challenge is at the center of a research group at Chalmers University of Technology, which has developed a method to easily remove pollutants from water. The group, led by Gunnar Westman, Associate Professor of Organic Chemistry focuses on new uses for cellulose and wood-based products and is part of the Wallenberg Wood Science Center.
The researchers have built up solid knowledge about cellulose nanocrystals—and this is where the key to water purification lies. These tiny nanoparticles have an outstanding adsorption capacity, which the researchers have now found a way to utilize.
“We have taken a unique holistic approach to these cellulose nanocrystals, examining their properties and potential applications. We have now created a biobased material, a form of cellulose powder with excellent purification properties that we can adapt and modify depending on the types of pollutants to be removed,” says Gunnar Westman.
Absorbs and breaks down toxins
In a study recently published in the scientific journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, the researchers show how toxic dyes can be filtered out of wastewater using the method and material developed by the group. The research was conducted in collaboration with the Malaviya National Institute of Technology Jaipur in India, where dye pollutants in textile industry wastewater are a widespread problem.
The treatment requires neither pressure nor heat and uses sunlight to catalyze the process. Gunnar Westman likens the method to pouring raspberry juice into a glass with grains of rice, which soak up the juice to make the water transparent again.
“Imagine a simple purification system, like a portable box connected to the sewage pipe. As the contaminated water passes through the cellulose powder filter, the pollutants are absorbed and the sunlight entering the treatment system causes them to break down quickly and efficiently. It is a cost-effective and simple system to set up and use, and we see that it could be of great benefit in countries that currently have poor or non-existent water treatment,” he says.
“Going from discharging completely untreated water to removing 80% of the pollutants is a huge improvement, and means significantly less destruction of nature and harm to humans. In addition, by optimizing the pH and treatment time, we see an opportunity to further improve the process so that we can produce both irrigation and drinking water. It would be fantastic if we can help these industries to get a water treatment system that works, so that people in the surrounding area can use the water without risking their health,” he says.
Can be used against other types of pollutants
Gunnar Westman also sees great opportunities to use cellulose nanocrystals for the treatment of other water pollutants than dyes. In a previous study, the research group has shown that pollutants of toxic hexavalent chromium, which is common in wastewater from mining, leather and metal industries, could be successfully removed with a similar type of cellulose-based material. The group is also exploring how the research area can contribute to the purification of antibiotic residues.
This is what beaver poop looks like… a mini sawdust snowball. This beaver poop is special though because this beaver poop is out of the water. Beavers almost always poop in the water, usually within the very ponds where they spend most of their time.
It may not be nanocrystal cellulose but it’s twice chewed and filters water real well!
We’ve been cleaning water for a long time but in Iowa some of us figured that we better start farming willow before there was nothing left to eat except corn!
Walking sticks? Forgoing a bit of bark today for a whole willow in a few years is just the sensible thing to do when humans keep whacking down your favorite food! Watch the whole video though. It’s good!
Researchers in Poland have found another reason to love beavers: They benefit wintering birds.
The rodents, once maligned as destructive pests, have been getting a lot of positive press lately. And for good reason. Beavers are ecosystem engineers. As they gather trees and dam waterways, they create wetlands, increase soil moisture, and allow more light to reach the ground. That drives the growth of herbaceous and shrubby vegetation, which benefits numerous animals.
Bats, who enjoy the buffet of insects found along beaver ponds, are among the beneficiaries. So too are butterflies who come for the diversity of flowering plants in the meadows beavers create.
Some previous research has found that this helping hand also extends to birds. For example, a 2008 study in the western United States showed that the vegetation that grows along beaver-influenced streams provided needed habitat for migratory songbirds, many of whom are in decline.
A beaver dam in Bierbza Marshes, Poland. Photo: Francesco Veronesi (CC BY-SA 2.0)
The new study published in the journal Forest Ecology and Management found further evidence by focusing on birds in winter. The researchers looked at assemblages of wintering birds on 65 beaver sites and 65 reference sites in a range of temperate forest habitat across Poland. Winter can be a challenging time for birds in that environment, as they need to reduce energy expenditures in the cold weather and find habitat that has high-quality food and roosting sites.
Wintering birds, it turns out, find those qualities near beaver habitat.
The researchers found a greater abundance of birds and more species richness near areas where beavers had modified waterways. Both were highest closest to the shores of beaver ponds.
“All beaver-induced modifications of the existing habitat may have influence on bird assemblage,” says Michal Ciach, a study co-author and a professor in the department of Forest Biodiversity at the University of Agriculture in Krakow, Poland. “But different bird species may rely on different habitat traits that emerge due to beaver activity. It’s like a supermarket.”
The Eurasian beaver. Photo: Per Harald Olsen/NTNU (CC BY 2.0)
The growing research about beavers suggests a greater need to protect their habitat and understand their important role in the ecosystem.
“Beaver sites should be treated as small nature reserves,” says Ciach. “The beaver, like no other species, is our ally in stopping the decline of biodiversity.”
The City of St. Albert is upping its engineering-ante in an ongoing duel with the local beaver population by installing some new water infrastructure safeguards over the next few years.
The City of St. Albert plans to add a couple of new tools to its water-management tool belt over the next few years to counteract problems caused by the local beaver population.
Melissa Logan, the city’s environmental coordinator, said staff will install pond levellers in high-priority spots throughout Carrot Creek and the Sturgeon River, starting this summer.
Unbeknownst to the estimated 16 individual beavers who call these rivers home, pond levellers allow water to flow through dams to prevent flooding, Logan said.
“The pond levellers you can put right in the middle of a dam and it will keep the water flowing through so that we don’t get flooding, but still allow the beaver to create some of the habitat that it needs,” she said.
“It’s just a method of coexisting with beavers on the landscape instead of getting rid of them entirely.”
City staff are getting some new tools to counteract regular infrastructure damage caused by the estimated 16 local beavers. FILE/Photo
“Best-case scenario is that beavers are still able to be active on the landscape and do their natural water management,” Logan said of what she hopes the new tools will accomplish.
“Protection of our infrastructure in the long term is really what we’re looking for.”
Logan said staff will install the tools in high-priority areas this summer, and in lower priority areas over the next few years.
Major cost savings
Glynnis Hood, an environmental biology and ecology professor at the University of Alberta’s Augustana campus in Camrose and author of The Beaver Manifesto (2011), told The Gazette she has seen pond levellers save municipalities thousands of dollars.
“There’s cost savings, there’s ecological advantages, (and) there’s infrastructure advantages for reducing maintenance needs,” said Hood.
“For instance, in Cooking Lake-Blackfoot, we installed about 13 (pond levellers) and then we monitored them over seven years. The maintenance that was required … was maybe pull a few sticks out here and there and they worked really well,” she said.
“The cost savings was in the tens of thousands of dollars, and if we added on some other economic drivers … it could even be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars of cost savings just for those 13 sites that otherwise have been chronically flooded for over 10 years.”
Hood said pond levellers, culvert protectors, and other beaver-damage mitigation can improve how people in the community view their neighbourhood beavers.
Beavers as extreme-weather mitigators
As part of an ongoing five-year project, Hood and Dr. Cherie Westbrook from the University of Saskatchewan are studying how beavers and their dams might help mitigate extreme climate events, such as floods and droughts.
“Over 60 per cent of the beaver dams actually held even in the 2013 flood that devastated Calgary and downstream areas,” she said. “Many of the beaver dams were only partially breached or didn’t breach at all.”
“They actually played a role in holding back some of that floodwater or at least delayed or slowed its downstream flow.”
Hood said it’s too early to say definitively if beaver dams could be a significant tool during extreme-weather events in Alberta, but current data and modelling looks promising.
“In climate change, you’re going to get more extreme-weather events, like these big rainfall events, but you’re also going to get drought, and beavers (might) play a role in a natural and nature-based solution for some of these things.”
To learn more about beavers and, as Logan described, their unmatched water management engineering ability, Hood was recently featured in a TED-Talk YouTube video.
The recent winter storms on the Central Coast didn’t just affect humans — they’ve also damaged the habitat of the local beaver population.
Audrey Taub is the Executive Director of the SLO Beaver Brigade, who describe themselves as “beaver advocates.” It’s a group of local biologists, science enthusiasts and community members who educate people about the rodents and the role they play in our ecosystem.
While talking and teaching about beavers is often a joyful experience, Taub said there has been some sad news recently about local beaver populations.
“The big rains pretty much washed everything out. This particular storm definitely displaced them,” Taub said.
“We found one dead juvenile. So they really can’t live on their own until they’re at least two. So these one-year-olds just didn’t have a chance.”
The SLO Beaver Brigade helped paint, “The Beaver Mural” on a local coffee shop they meet at once a week.
Taub said after the heavy rain, local beavers will have to rebuild their dams in places like streams and ponds. She said it’s not clear how long that will take, but she’s “excited for the whole community to watch the ponds develop,” Taub said.
Beavers play a major role in fighting climate change by building dams, which helps create and restore wetlands.
That’s important, because it’s estimated that globally, wetlands can store about 190 million cars’ worth of emissions every year.
Cooper Lienhart is the SLO Beaver Brigade’s Restorations Director.
“I used to think we would engineer our way out of the problem and make synthetic trees to suck CO2 back out of the atmosphere. But yeah, I learned that wetlands are [the] most efficient land ecosystem at absorbing and storing CO2,” Lienhart said.
Last week the SLO Beaver Brigade received the California Coastal Commission’s WHALE TAIL grant. Taub and Lienhart said the money will be used to offer educational tours, river cleanups, and translations for Spanish-speakers interested in learning about beavers.
More information on the emissions-fighting rodents is online at slobeaverbrigade.com.
Read the whole article here.
And there is more news from the SLO Beaver Brigade: The First Annual SLO County Beaver Festival!
Beaver Festival Info:
The SLO Beaver Brigade invites eager beavers of all ages to the First Annual SLO County Beaver Festival on Saturday April 1 in SLO Mission Plaza from 10 am to 3 pm. Kids are welcome and encouraged to come learn about beavers with us! The festival will be a celebration of our local beavers with live music, speakers, food and drink, educational displays, crafts and games, and local booths
Why do we celebrate beavers? Because we see them as climate change superheroes! Beavers build dams in our creeks and rivers, turning them into lush wetlands. This SLOWS the water down, allowing it to SPREAD out and SINK into our aquifers (slow it, spread it, sink it)! Not only does this help us in droughts, but their wetlands also create refuge from wildfires. Come join us on April 1st to learn about all this and more at our first ever SLO Beaver Festival.
And for the last bit of news, there is a very lively and informative interview with Ben Goldfarb by Taya Jae at The Pen and The Sword.
“One plus one plus one equals six on this project,” said Kat Hall, restoration manager for The Lands Council, an environmental non-profit organization that seeks to preserve and restore Northwest ecosystems through partnerships.
The excitement is evident in Hall’s voice as she speaks about an innovative and collaborative effort to reconnect and restore aquatic habitat in Thompson Creek, a primary tributary to Newman Lake located northeast of Spokane, Washington. For the past 3 years, Hall has been part of what she calls “a dream team” of federal, state, and local partners to design, implement, and monitor beaver dam analogs (BDAs), human made structures inspired by nature’s busiest builder that efficiently improve the health of aquatic ecosystems.
Historically, Thompson Creek meandered through the lower watershed; but over a century ago, it was straightened to accommodate for agriculture, helping to reduce flooding for farmers. While the straightened channel was beneficial to the farmers, it had less desirable impacts on watershed health. The straighter, less natural flow path increased the speed of the water, led to the erosion of the bank, and transported more sediment and pollutants downstream into Newman Lake. This incision of the creek has also caused a disconnection between the creek and its surrounding floodplains, which has allowed for the dominance of reed canary grass in the area, a non-native species that outcompetes more diverse and beneficial vegetation.
Aerial photos taken of Thompson Creek before the completion of the beaver dam analog structures.Aerial photos taken of Thompson Creek after the completion of the beaver dam analog structures.
There doesn’t seem to be much food to entice beavers yet and that might be good for awhile due to the current poor water quality!:
“One of the primary concerns about straightening the channel and disconnecting it from its floodplain is the increased phosphorous levels we are seeing as a result,” explained Brian Walker, a private lands biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service). “Phosphorous travels with the sediment through Thompson Creek and ends up downstream in Newman Lake, which really impacts the water quality in the lake.”
While phosphorus is a naturally occurring and essential nutrient for plants and animals, too much of it can cause explosive growth of aquatic plants and algae. This can lead to a variety of water quality problems, including low dissolved oxygen concentrations, which can cause fish kills and harm other aquatic life. The major concern with phosphorus in Newman Lake is a toxic blue-green algae bloom that can cause the lake to be closed to recreation and private landowners (see a write-up from USGS on phosphorus and water quality).
“High levels of phosphorous are detrimental to both people and wildlife — just a couple licks of contaminated water can be lethal for pets; it’s pretty bad stuff,” said Walker. “But thankfully, we people are learning how to mimic wildlife to come up with a solution for us all!”
Phosphorous-laden sediment plume flowing from Thompson Creek
Improving Thompson Creek has long been a goal, and several time consuming and costly measures have been implemented in the past with varying degrees of success.
“We weren’t getting the results we hoped for from other projects and we needed to go in a different direction; we needed to get creative,” said Walker.
Inspiration struck in the form of brown fur and bucked teeth — beavers. Like ecosystem engineers, beavers manipulate their environment by building dams that slow the passage of water through a river and can act as a natural filter that cleans the water supply. Beaver dam analogs aim to do the same thing through creating roughness — think speed bumps — to slow water velocity and allow sediment and pollutants to settle. The beaver dam analogs will also raise the water level of Thompson Creek, reconnecting it to its floodplain and allowing for the growth of more natural vegetation to create a healthier ecosystem.
A completed beaver dam analog structure on Thompson Creek.
“The Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program has had success with at least 20 BDAs in other Washington watersheds and, with the help of our “dream team,” we knew our odds of making positive change in Thompson Creek were high,” Walker said.
Engineering students from Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington share the work with staff from the Service and The Lands Council during the implementation phase of the beaver dam analog project which involves pounding posts into the ground.
It is said that all roads lead to Rome which has come to mean that there are lots of different methods that can lead you to the same conclusion but comes from the fact that once upon a time in fact most of the roads that lasted were built by the Romans and lead from or to their ever expanding empire.
The saying refers to the vast network of roads built up during the course of Rome’s history, which stretched for more than 250,000 miles (400,000 km) at the height of the Roman Empire. These roads connected the capital with all parts of its empire—from Scotland in the north to Egypt in the south; from Portugal in the west to Syria in the east.
Of course where I sit it seems equally possible to say that ALL ROADS LEAD TO BEAVERS. Because you come to an interest in them by their impact on salmon, or their impact on soil, or their impact on water storage in general, there is plenty to hold your attention. There are beaver converts of pretty much every ilk, and the permaculture believers are huge fans as you can see in this short film.
This petition is a good dam thing to support! But I don’t understand why they didn’t mention our ability to help out in this piece below:
