Category: Beavers and water

IT’S ABOUT THE WATER, STUPID

heidi08 Beavers and water July 23, 2018

The struggle to keep water on a drying landscape always seems to wind up – well if not directly pro-beaver, then at least firmly beaver-adjacent. Take this recent article about Montana for instance. I’m not sure how much faith I’d personally place in a college whose initials are officially “UM” but I like where this is headed.

Drought is coming to Montana. How do we protect ourselves

Last year, Montana witnessed the driest summer on record. It was also the second hottest summer, which made the weather more unbearable. This extreme weather, driven by a warming climate, directly led to huge crop loss and the biggest wildfire season ever. According to the US Department of Agriculture, drought decreased wheat production in Montana and the Dakotas by 64 million bushels in 2017, and an estimated 1.3 million acres of forest burned across Montana.

“Water is the second air, the main resource we need,” said Nicholas L. Silverman, a hydrologist and water resources engineer who studies climate at the University of Montana. Riparian resiliency is the ability of waterside vegetation recovering from damages. These vegetation areas can be categorized into two types: low resiliency and high resiliency. Low-resilient vegetation are sensitive to environmental changes. When drought happens, they will die. On the contrary, high-resilient vegetation would bounce back and help protect against drought.

Wait, I’m trying to guess which kind beaver build. Hi or Low?

**Beaver dams help build riparian resiliency by creating ponds and wetlands that hold almost 10 times the water without beavers.**

To deal with this vicious cycle, Silverman said, we need to build high-resilient riparian areas. Silverman suggests three strategies to help riparian areas recover and become more resilient to the warming climate. The first is to reintroduce more beavers. According to Glynnis Hood, an environmental scientist at the University of Alberta-Augustana who specializes in wetland ecology and the impact of beavers, beaver dams can help store more water. She looked at 54 years of data in Elk Island National Park, and found that beaver dams secure up to nine times that of a pond or water source without beavers.

The second strategy is to build artificial ponds that mimic natural systems. Humans have significantly impacted aquatic ecosystems, and human enhancements can improve their resiliency one will help us to preserve water flows.

First, he concludes we need ACTUAL BEAVERS to do their thing and then we need to pretend to be beavers and do more of their thing. Hurray! They go on to say then everyone needs to change how they graze their cattle so that some plants are left and ACTUAL BEAVER can come you know, do their thing.. The answers to Montana’s drought has a flat tail, that’s for sure.

Ultimately, reducing greenhouse gas emissions will help to reduce the worst impacts of drought in Montana, but in the meantime, helping streams and rivers cope with rising temperatures will fend off some of the worst impacts of a warming planet.

Speaking of which I came across the COOLEST resource on the entire internet yesterday, I know you’ll want to play with it. Right click on a particular river or stream to find its watershed anywhere in the country. This is the one our beavers live in, but you might want to check your aunts home in Georgia or Wyoming too.

THAT’S NOT FUNNY — THAT’S DROUGHT SERIOUS!

heidi08 Beavers and water May 23, 2018

Add this to the “I-don’t-get-why-this-is-funny” column. A writer from Colorado offering a ‘humerus’ column about a city that should have added beavers to its water-storage plan.

Does not seem silly to me at all.

HUMOR: Beavers, to the Rescue?

Last November, the voters in Pagosa Springs, Colorado turned down yet another chance to increase their taxes, to allow a local water district — the San Juan Water Conservancy District — to move ahead with a plan to build a new reservoir, north of downtown in a dry valley known as Dry Gulch. At one point, the reservoir had been priced at $357 million, but more recent estimates from SJWCD suggested a price of maybe $100 million, or even less. The District publicity mentioned a reservoir capable of storing around 11,000 acre-feet.

The tax increase requested by SJWCD would have allowed for a $2 million loan. I admit, I struggled with math back in high school, but it seems to me that a $2 million loan would have left the Water District a bit shy of the total needed.

Maybe the Water District should invest in beavers, instead?

A recent essay published on the Sierra Club Colorado Chapter website suggests that a typical beaver family is capable of building a pond that stores about 10 acre-feet of water — about 3.3 million gallons. Beavers are apparently willing to perform this service year after year, with absolutely no government subsidy — and without any need for a government bureaucracy to supervise their work. All a beaver asks for is a few saplings, now and then, to munch on.

See what I mean? What’s funny about that? It makes perfect sense.

If we were able to coax just 2,000 beaver families into relocate to Archuleta County (with a typical beaver family consisting of a husband, a wife, and four children) we would soon have 11,000 acre-feet of water storage at our disposal. Free of charge.

I’m certainly no expert on beavers, [Editors note: I really, really believe that] but my general impression is that they favor small government, private property rights, and a quiet, sparsely inhabited neighborhood surrounded by trees. Which is to say, they would fit right in with Pagosa Springs’ social culture.

The above-mentioned Sierra Club essay on beavers expressly mentions the “Colorado Water Plan,” assembled a couple of years ago under Governor John Hickenlooper’s watch. (You can read the plan at this website.) The Water Plan doesn’t list any “authors” — at least, I couldn’t find any such list — but I get the impression that hundreds, maybe thousands, of citizens had input into the Plan, through the various “Basin Roundtables” scattered across our great state.

If you do a search for ‘beaver’ on the plan website, however, you will be sorely disappointed.

How could hundreds of intelligent citizens give input into the Colorado Water Plan… and not a single mention of our water-loving friend, the beaver?

I ask myself the same thing about California every dam day. But I’m not being funny or teasing the Sierra Club when I do it. I’m drought serious.

On behalf of Nature’s little water storage expert, I will go out on a limb and offer a possible reason why Governor Hickenlooper and his vast team of advisors utterly ignored this taxpayer-friendly rodent. It’s pretty simple, really. The Colorado Water Plan ignored everyone who questions massive government debt and expansive government bureaucracy. The beaver, as it turns out, is in good company, politically speaking.

If only beavers were allowed to vote, what a different world this would be.

Now that’s the truth! I know the author, Louis Cannon, fancies himself very droll with this article, but it couldn’t be more true if it tried. Not that I think beavers care about our troubles enough to vote, but for goodness sake they should be counted as an asset in every water plan in the west. And every time someone wants permission to trap one they should have to appeal to the local waterboard and indicate how they will personally compensate for the water storage and wildlife they remove if they are allowed to trap.

Sigh.

I at least want the loss of a beaver dam to REGISTER. Like it does in this article from Montana.

Destroying beaver dam stops flooding, impacts environment

Flooding in Helena almost immediately subsided in several areas of the valley after the county decided to dismantle a beaver dam. News of the destruction set fine with those affected by weeks of high water around their home.
However, our Bliss Zechman sat down with Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials to discuss how destroying a habitat can affect the surrounding ecosystem.

They provide an important ecological benefit in natural system. The problem is, our systems are not completely natural,” said Greg Lemon, Spokesperson for FWP. Dams provide rearing habitats for small fish and they help promote wetland species. This natural process produces colder and cleaner water, which can benefit the stream miles down the line. However, problems occur when humans interfere.

Yes you fixed your little flooding problem but at what cost? And when will new beavers move in and do the same thing all over again? I wish this was the permanent template for every future beaver damage article.

A girl can dream, can’t she?

THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE

heidi08 Beavers and water May 16, 2018

One thing I love about tracking the appreciation of beavers is that it is like watching a colorful beach ball bounce from state to state in an cheerful game of hot potato. First the good news is in North Carolina, then in Wyoming, and now New Mexico. Sit back and enjoy a truly enjoyable report that made the local morning news on KRQE.

Beavers are recognized as vital – and adorable – contributors to healthy water systems in NM

My goodness what a great summary! Don’t you wish you could come Friday evening? There’s a lot to be proud of in this segment, and I’m sure the good folks Karl Malcolm and Cecil Rich appreciate this coverage. I’m thinking that even though we haven’t met we would quickly become beaver friends.– Scratch that, we already ARE friends. I knew that name sounded familiar. Karl Malcolm is the author of the beaver toolbox which came out years before Pollock’s restoration guidebook. No wonder this interview is so good.

This was certainly much better to come across than the weather channel story that discussed the recent exeter results and ran a photo of a nutria.

I get that everyone can’t see the subtle differences – the wiry white whiskers, the forward-facing nostrils, the slanting eyes, but why don’t people at least realize that if the photo doesn’t show you the classic beaver tail it’s because the animal photographed has the WRONG kind of tail entirely!

Sheesh!

But there isa last dose of wonderful news. I got an email monday from a woman in Vermont who was sad about the city removing beavers near her property. She was hopeful at least to see if the could repair the dam, so I went hunting for a video about using BDAs. I found this fantastic one which from fish and wildlife which does such a great job of describing the lack of beavers that necessitated human effort and the DELIGHTFUL surprise they got upon completion.

Honestly, if you don’t have time to watch the whole thing, at least skip to 7:38 for a great big smile.
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SURE BEAVERS MAKE A DIFFERENCE. IT’S JUST “UNDETECTABLY SMALL”

heidi08 Beavers and water April 27, 2018

Most everything you read about the John Day in Oregon project to restore streams using beavers is hopeful, encouraging, sensible and wise. But of course any star has many angles. and some of them especially pointy. A new dissertation took a computer model of all that dam water storage everyone’s talking about and found that it made zero difference to streams in late summer. So why even bother? File this research right next to the one that says “I guess we could increase the minimum wage, but those poor people will just blow the money on booze and women.” or “‘sure we can improve health care for certain ethnic group, but they just grow up and shoot each other anyway! So what’ the point?’

OSU study: More water in meadows unlikely to aid streamflows

– Increasing water storage in the mountain meadows of the arid West through diverse river restoration strategies has local benefits for vegetation but is unlikely to benefit downstream flows, according to an Oregon State University study.

Such practices may increase plant growth along streams and in adjacent valleys, with potential benefits for riparian ecosystems, grazing animals and agriculture. But as thirsty plants tap moisture reserves in the soil, they pump some of that water back into the atmosphere, a process known as evapotranspiration. As a result, flows downstream are likely to be unaffected and may even be diminished.

Do you get it? Yes. those beaver ponds save water and increase biodiversity and everything, but then those goddam plants and animals come and suck it all UP. They don’t even save it for us to use, the ungrateful species. So it actually doesn’t help!

The research was conducted by Caroline Nash, a Ph.D. student in the Oregon State University Water Resources Engineering program, and Gordon Grant, adjunct professor in the OSU College of Ocean, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences and a U.S. Forest Service hydrologist.

“There is a robust movement to restore rivers in the West,” said Grant. “By ponding more water in meadows on higher surfaces, people have suggested that extra water would become available to increase flows downstream, especially in the late summer. No one had tested that rigorously until now. This is the first time we’ve been able to show that while creating wet meadows might have real benefits for ecosystems, livestock and other agricultural purposes, the downstream benefits to streamflow aren’t realistic.”

While raising the level of incised channels raised groundwater levels in the adjacent land and increased total water storage, the researchers found that changes to late summer flows, when rivers are typically at their lowest, were “undetectably small.” Moreover, reductions in streamflow are likely from increased evapotranspiration, a lower gradient of the water table from meadows drawing to channels, and a lower volume of soil in which drainable water could be stored.

You see? There is a value for beavers but now research has proven its “undetectably small“. So stop researching them already. We well know that because this paper concludes that BEAVERS DON”T MATTER we should be prepared to see its bogus findings reported everywhere in the coming days. Bad beaver news travels fast. And everyone loves to be told what they are sure anyway is true already .

Michael Pollock said that NOAA needs a hyrdrologist on this right away and thinks the study doesn’t accurately invoke the scale that is needed. Stay tuned for what comes next.

Meanwhile I just finished this bio for the back of the brochure with Amy’s picture and this seems as good as a time as any to share it.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN CALIFORNIA LOSES ITS SNOWPACK?

heidi08 Beavers and water April 5, 2018

Along the twisted trail I’ve traveled to save some beavers, I have picked up vocabulary to aid me in my quest. Words that I never knew or needed to employ as a fairly competent child psychologist. Words like ‘riparian’ or ‘invertebrate’ or ‘aquifer’ have gradually replaced the use of word like “bipolar’, ‘dissociative’ and ‘atypical’. I’m in a new world now, and I have even started dreaming in that once foreign tongue.

So of course I thought of beavers when Bob Kobres of Georgia sent me this article this morning.

New report on climate change in the Sierra Nevada shows need for human adaptation

The Sierra Nevada mountain range looms over California, stretching 400 miles from Oregon to Tehachapi Pass in Kern County. The range contains the highest point in the continental United States, Mount Whitney, and is home to both the oldest and largest trees in the world—as well as diverse wildlife, from mountain lions to mosquitos.

The range also looms large in the lives of California’s 40 million residents. The food we grow and water we drink depends on the mountains and their effects on climate. That’s why researchers in UCLA’s Center for Climate Science spent the past three years projecting how climate change will affect the Sierra Nevada. On April 2, the final report was released.

The state’s climate is expected to change dramatically by the end of the century, presenting challenges to reduce carbon emissions and adapt to new climate realities.

More precipitation will fall as rain instead of snow, and snow will melt more rapidly.
On average, snowpack across the entire Sierra on April 1 would be 64 percent less than it was when measured in the years 1981–2000.
The midpoint of peak snowmelt and runoff would occur 50 days earlier, on average, than it did from 1981–2000.
Because less water will be stored naturally as snow and will melt faster, it will be difficult to store using our current system of dams and reservoirs.

Snowpack is another one of those many words I’ve picked up. I mean I heard it on the news before, but never gave a thought about its importance to the water that came out of my Bay Area faucet. It crept into my vocabulary when I heard Suzanne Fouty on the beaver documentary in Elko Nevada discuss whether beaver dams can help eek out the water lost because of the changing snow pack. Remember that awesome scene?

This is my favorite part of Jari Osborne’s documentary, and shows beautifully what a dramatic difference beaver can make on a dry landscape. The longer segment shows Suzanne talking about how that stored water can help recover the water lost because of the depleted snow pack.

In a recent Los Angeles Times op-ed, Hall and climate center associate director Katharine Reich urged the state to prepare now. California currently relies on snowpack for 60 percent of its water supply. They said the state should perform a comprehensive assessment of current infrastructure to account for their projections. Hall and Reich suggest that increasing groundwater could provide one promising solution.

And do you think the results of the fancy study or this important article mention the heroic work of one particular rodent that can recharge the water table and store water to make up for that lost snow pack? Of course it doesn’t. Because if you want to read information that sensible and bleedin’ obvious you have to come here instead.

The final Sierra report also predicts greater snow losses during both drought years and very wet years. The findings suggest that longer, hotter dry seasons would follow the wet seasons, drying out plants that grew in those water-rich months and making record wildfires such as the state saw in 2017 more common. Extreme weather could also lead to additional challenges in flood control.