Because the beaver isn't just an animal; it's an ecosystem!

Category: Beavers and water


A nice article emerged from Wildlife Defenders yesterday but the CDFW news took precedence. Now we can settle down and enjoy it in earnest.

Traditional Farming Communities Coexist with Beavers

By building dams and lodges, beavers are considered ecosystem engineers. Their dams raise water levels, slow water speed and change water direction, which can increase wetland size, enhance wildlife and plant diversity, improve water quality and maintain stable water temperatures. Beaver ponds provide habitat for freshwater fish, migratory birds, amphibians and other wetland species.

Importantly for the hot, dry Southwest, beavers can play a significant role in addressing climate change and the biodiversity crisis. But beavers can also sometimes cause trouble for irrigators and property owners. However, there are solutions that allow humans to coexist with this furry engineer. (more…)


Felicia Marcus is member of the California Water Policy board, a fellow at Stanford’s “Water in the West” Program, an attorney, consultant, former colleague of our favorite water woman Ann Riley of the Sf Waterboard, AND regional director of the EPA under Clinton.

She tweeted this yesterday.

 
I first read about her work at Stanford over a year ago and invited all the fellows to attend the California Beaver Summit. Which she did. And I’m guessing the message landed in all the right places.


I realized yesterday’s story in Marin was a big, big deal. All day different people, including my 94 year old uncle. sent it to me. It occurred to me, it was the first time, not counting Martinez I mean, that Californians really DEMANDED beavers. Asking CDFW to allow them to have beavers is pretty groundbreaking. I kept hearing the tune of Dire Straits “I want my, I want my.I want my MTV” all day in the back of my mind. Except we’d have to change it to “I want my BÆV”

And then there’s articles like this; From the California Water Blog

Nature has solutions…What are they? And why do they matter?

California’s water problems are intense; so much so they are often referred to as ‘wicked’ for their extraordinary depth of complexity and general unsolvability. Yet it recently occurred to me that some of the better and more creative solutions often derive from one particular source – nature itself. Indeed, studies of nature-based solutions or ‘NBS’ are rising rapidly (Davies and Lafortezza 2019; Nelson et al. 2020; Acreman et al. 2021), and are especially popular within the NGO and environmental communities. (more…)


Have you been reading about the London beavers? Every day they are making headlines in the UK and now their on our Weather Channel.

400 years after extinction, beavers return to major city to combat flood concerns

Despite the cheeky names — Sigourney Beaver and Justin Beaver — given to the two beavers released, officials have high hopes for the rodent pair. Could they be the answer to battle life-threatening flash floods?

Beavers haven’t roamed the streams and woods of London since the days of William Shakespeare. But after over 400 years of extinction, the rodents are being reintroduced to the United Kingdom capital in a “quite emotional” moment.

A pair of beavers, temporarily named Justin Beaver and Sigourney Beaver, were released into a designed enclosure on Forty Hall Farm in Enfield on March 17. The beavers are part of a two-year plan by Enfield Council to combat the increase in major flash floods that have plagued the city in recent years. (more…)


I would generally say that for the past five years beaver news has entered American hyperdrive with the publication of Ben’s Goldfarb’s book. (Who by the way was in the New York Times yesterday.) (Not about beavers. The NYT will never – mark my words – publish a positive article about beavers) But ever since 2018 this website made a left turn and stopped posting stories about European beavers so much. They have been doing great work and helping futrher our cause greatly but I often ignored headlines to focus on our own shores.

I couldn’t pass this up though.

Too many busy beavers are weakening dykes in Gelderland

(more…)

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