on September 15 – exactly two days from now – Timberborn Early Access begins. To keep you up to date with what to expect from the game in its new incarnation, we’ll be counting down to the release date with daily previews on different aspects of our beaver city-builder.
Today, let’s look at Timberborn’s core feature, droughts, and how they affect the game’s flow and difficulty. Because you know, we’ll have different difficulty modes at launch. We were planning to add that later, but since it was often requested, we moved it up on our priority list.
Not only that, we’re giving you an option to create a custom difficulty . You can choose how many beavers you start with, how much water and food they need, how many resources they have at the beginning of the game and how long the droughts will be. If you want to, you can make it an ultimate sandbox experience, or an ultimate hardcore desert world.
No no no, you’re saying. I can hear you. Heidi made this up. She’s did some kind of graphic and now she’s pretending this is real. But she’s not. It’s totally fucking real.
It’s post-apocalypse now, which means the drought (previously: “dry season”) eventually comes. The strength of water sources on the map begins to fade and after a while, the water sources “turn off” completely while the evaporation continues. The river beds gradually dry up and with them – the surrounding areas. Fields and forests turn yellow and will wither unless you have a way of preventing that with a clever combination of dams, floodgates, irrigation towers, canals, water dumps etc.
If you do not prepare for a drought properly, you will also end up with useless pumps and water wheels, so unless there’s a lot of water in the tanks and you have alternative power sources, your population might wither too, if you catch our drift. Here’s a note for our demo players – we’re evil and we made the second drought in the demo a little too severe on purpose. That’s not what will happen to you in the normal game. Sorry, not sorry.
You would think i made this up. Especially the dialogue where the beavers reflect on the end of the stupid humans who caused a world that they could not survive. But i did not. it’s real.
The Burgoyne watershed — now known by its original Cowichan name, Xwaaqw’um — is one of the only places on the island where an entire stream system is protected parkland. Despite the changes wrought by early loggers and farmers, the valley’s waterways continue to provide homes for trout, salamanders, tree frogs, iridescent swallows and great blue herons. So, when the opportunity arose to use her expertise in wetlands restoration as part of a larger ecological and cultural revitalization in the park, Annschild jumped at the chance.
In 2019, a partnership sprang up between BC Wildlife Federation, BC Parks and Stqeeye’ Learning Society, which leads an ecosystem and education project at Xwaaqw’um in collaboration with Cowichan Nation.
As a focus for cultural “re-presencing” and a return to Indigenous land management practices, we can see Xwaaqw’um as a microcosm of the shifting human geography of British Columbia. Countless generations of Indigenous stewardship delivered thriving biodiversity. That balance altered when settlers brought land-use patterns centred around field agriculture and deforested pasture-land. Yet, the Xwaaqw’um watershed provides an example of the resilience and adaptability of species. Despite being crisscrossed by eight logging roads, streams in the watershed still have coastal cutthroat trout and coho salmon running through them.
Guess what else they have? Go ahead, guess.
Annschild’s work is informed first by developing an understanding of the disturbance history of a site. According to Annschild, the surprising, single most significant hydrological modification at Xwaaqw’um was the near-total eradication of beavers from the landscape. She remarks, “The presence of beaver in streams not only allows streams to flow year-round but buffers those streams against drought and wildfire.”
“Settlers in B.C. came after beaver populations had already been decimated; what is fascinating is that there is still active ongoing suppression of beaver in B.C., which is not acknowledged. It’s having a significant impact on our watersheds.”
I so appreciate having the dramatic loss of beavers acknowledged. But I must admit that I for one don’t find their continued suppression “fascinating”?
“When I read about climate change, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen the words ‘wetland drainage’ together with ‘wildfires and deforestation,’” says Annschild. “To me, we’re missing an ingredient in those models: we fail to calculate how we’ve already dramatically reduced the resilience of our watersheds.”
Annschild is no fool. Well done.
Oh and happy birthday to this “wildchild” who has been my partner longer than I’ve been alive. And let me just say now the answer to this question is “Yes”.
Well this isn’t something you see every day. A nice article about beavers from Massachusetts. And it’s not written by the beaver institute. That may be a first.
When a culvert blew out a section of East Street in Belchertown on July 18, I set out to investigate. As we walked up the closed road, we saw bits of blacktop and large branches strewn across several lawns. Large melon-sized cobbles had been transported hundreds of yards (a feat which requires very fast flowing water!) into gardens and driveways.
Sharply cut road banks testified to strong whirlpool eddies both upstream and downstream. The roadbed was cut clean through 10 feet of material down to the stream. What happened here, and why?
Rumors pointed to beavers in the Herman Covey Wildlife Management Area just upstream, but I wasn’t convinced. WMAs are set up to allow nature to do its thing, and the increasing beaver populations in the state are no exception. Beavers have happily resided on these lands for decades, creating thriving wetlands that are home to a diverse community of plants and animals.
Wow, Doesn’t the author know she’s supposed to blindly accept bad things people say about beavers? It’s practically the state motto. Who wrote this article anyway? Some beaver-hugging teenager that doesn’t eat meat? Oh no, she’s a professor of hydrogeology from University of Amherst.
In addition, their oxygen-poor ponds accumulate organic matter, storing carbon in the rich fertile depths. These wetlands clean and filter water, and can capture, slow and spread large stormflows across their wide meadows, preventing flood damage downstream — until now.
Historical maps of the wildlife management area show wetlands from as far back as the 1900s, and photos indicate the presence of beavers in the area before the 1990s, with ponds alternating between sometimes dry and sometimes wet.
Over the years, there seemed to be a string of two or three large ponds that would come and go. Beavers may relocate, be removed, or their dams may fail, causing their abandoned ponds to drain and fill with grassy meadow vegetation. Over time, these meadows may be succeeded by woodlands, which may be felled once again by future beavers. It’s all part of the cycle.
Well okay, so beavers come and go and do some good things. So do mafia kingpins right?
Enter climate change, with rainstorms delivering precipitation with a high-intensity punch. Generally, beavers maintain their dams (homes!) to weather storms, but this time, at this location, rainfall intensity (not seen since the 1938 hurricane) was just too much.
So beavers caused the flood, right?
Well, no. One of the important roles beaver dams play in the landscape is actually capturing and dissipating the flood wave during a storm, which is exactly what the second beaver dam downstream helped to do. Initially, the dam-burst flood had a lot of energy to erode and transport large material. Fortunately, the floodplain meadow between the upper and lower beaver ponds dissipated the energy. Large cobbles graded into smaller and smaller materials and finally into fine sands that abruptly stopped.
Then, all of the water entered the meadowy upstream part of the lower beaver pond. The second wetland caught the flood.
Despite the fact that twice as much water was added to the lower wetland (rain plus floodwaters), the lower beaver dam, some 20 feet upstream of the road, did not fail. At this point, storm water probably rose and spilled over the lower beaver dam, pushing some loose branches and debris over the top. Under the road, the paltry 3-foot culvert opening was no match for this volume of material. The culvert clogged, and the road became a dam. Water levels rose behind the clogged culvert, and appeared to have topped out a foot or two above the road.
So wait, you’re saying dams usually stop flooding?
Then disaster struck. With the pressure and whirling erosional force of two whole watersheds’ worth of record-breaking storm, roadbed materials were undercut and washed out. A sudden burst of water, logs, debris, asphalt and plant materials flushed through the opening, causing severe damage and flooding to downstream homes.
The burst cut a gaping slice through the road down to the streambed, taking one driveway and its culvert along with it. A 10-foot wall of logs, vegetation and debris that were piled upstream of the road, just downstream of the intact lower beaver dam, saved downstream homes from an even worse fate. We’ve guaranteed nature (and beavers) a place in our landscape; and we, and they, will need to adapt to climate change together.
Five days after the flood, downstream beavers were busy shoring up their structure, rebuilding farther back from the road in a broad arc, designed to withstand a large wave. Perhaps we can learn something from nature’s engineers. We could start by replacing the 3-foot-wide culvert with a larger, wider structure that would be more resilient to floods and passing logs and debris — for a stream this size the recommended width is more like 12 or 14 feet. If federal infrastructure money comes our way, my first recommendation will be that all culvert crossings in the state be replaced to meet a similar standard that would protect us from damaging, intense storms wrought by climate change.
So you’re saying that if it weren’t for the dams the flooding would have been WORSE? That’s the kind of crazy idea that will get you talked about in the bay state. Be careful. And oh, btw, beaver dams aren’t beaver HOMES.
“beavers maintain their dams (homes!)”
They’re like the picket fences beavers build in their front yard. Their job is to raise the water to cover the lodge. There’s nothing inside them. They are a wall to hold back water.
A while ago I wrote about the Virginia writer who noticed beavers on his land, thought briefly about their friend’s comment on their value and ended up killing them anyway. Now that same writer has had a longer conversation with his friend and is really starting to think, I believe these are the conversations that everyone who loves the land needs to be having, and it makes me enormously happy to read. Maybe I’ll even send them a copy of Ben’s book.
Aerial image of the Rappahannock river above Fredericksburg, VA
A while back, I met with my friend, Bill Fletcher, to have a bite and pick up where we had left off so many years earlier. Listening to him talk about water as Rappahannock’s most precious asset, I was reminded that change happens when need and experienced-based insight converge. What follows is Bill’s thinking about what we can do next to protect what we all cherish about Rappahannock:
Tommy Bruce: When did your family come to settle in Rappahannock?
Bill Fletcher: My family has been here since the 1740’s. I remember my father telling me that generations back, our forebears came up from the Tidewater area in the summertime to get away from the malaria and mosquitoes. Over time, summer houses became family homes for the family.
Back then there were no real roads and even fewer bridges. Only ferries and low water crossings. My father said that the rivers were navigable and barges transported people and material up from Fredericksburg. In my own time I remember canoeing with my father on the Thornton River on a regular basis. That’s not possible today.
Okay now THAT’S what I would call an old-timer. Family lived in the area since 1740. I sense that in every possible other way Bill and I might hate eachother. But in this are we are of like minds. Wonderful.
Tommy Bruce: Water is a theme in your life. Is it one for Rappahannock?
Bill Fletcher: I’ve always been a bit fascinated with water. When I was 7 or 8 years old, I’d sneak out of the house and go down to one of the little streams on the property and try to build dams out of sticks, reeds and grasses. I’d wait to see how long they lasted. Not very long of course. Later in the 1980’s, a geologist told us the water levels in the 1700’s was maybe two or three feet higher on the Thornton River. That made me curious about where all the water had gone. Since then, I’ve talked to various experts.
Tommy Bruce: So, what is the situation today?
Bill Fletcher: Well, I can tell you what is happening on my land. The old artesian well, down at what we call the Jail House, was drilled in 1980, and is now down 100 feet. We have had to dig additional wells to make do on the property. The challenge these days is… we need to retain water on the land for the good of our lands, but also to build up our aquifers. I’ve been trying to find out the depth of our wells relative sea level. Unfortunately, I haven’t found any records tracking the replacement of wells and why it’s happening.
Let’s talk about your wells. Let’s talk about your water. Let’s talk.
Tommy Bruce: What should we do about it?
Bill Fletcher: Water is life. It is the most important thing you have in life. We can’t just sit by and watch our lands dry up. We need to envision a different future for Rappahannock County. Don’t get me wrong, I’m an old timer and I believe in the old time ways. But, we’ve got to change with the times and learn from what some of our neighbors are doing. This is just my personal opinion.
Tommy Bruce: What are you thinking?
Bill Fletcher: Rappahannock is about water. So, we need to think about ways to slow down the flow of water away from our county. If the water stays longer on our lands, it’s good for the soil, vegetation, the wildlife and will help reverse the very real depletion or our aquifers. If we do nothing, we’re going to be the first ones to dry up.
Tommy Bruce: What do you mean, “be the first”. Who else would be affected?
Bill Fletcher: We are the headwaters for everything east of us, downstream all the way to the Bay. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation also tells us our waters help carry the silt and pollutants that are now affecting the health of the Bay. So, we need our aquifers to remain plentiful and flowing at a more appropriate rate. That’s where my idea about bringing back beaver dams and what they call Beaver Dam Analogs (BDAs). This is where Rappahannock could actually set itself apart and be more beneficial to our citizens, our state and our nation.
Oh Bill. I’m liking where the water and the Chesapeake is taking you. Stay in that stream and lets flow together.
Tommy Bruce: So, how can BDAs help landowners in Rappahannock?
Bill Fletcher: I learned that there are four things beaver dams and the analogs can do for us. First, they slow the flow of water and mitigate flooding damages. They filter sediment which cleans the soil and allows the water to sink in to replenish the water table. They help the wildlife habitat. Fourth, dams help increase vegetation. Also, keep in mind what they call pollutants we call fertilizers. When the ponds overflow, the sediment –to which the pollutants are attached- is then deposited on the ground thereby improving it.
Tommy Bruce: But I seem to remember you liked to blow up beaver dams?
Bill Fletcher: Let me tell you a story. When I was 10 years old, the beavers would build dams on the best crop land we had at Montpelier. When the flooding got to a certain level, my father would tell Ollie Dodson to go down and blow them up and I would go with him. It was a tremendous amount of fun. I loved loud noises. All these years later, I took a friend of mine, who happens to be an avid hunter, down to these same fields where beavers had again been hard at work. The place was transformed and wildlife has come back. We saw a big brunch of turkeys in the field and then 30 feet away, we came upon 20 or so deer and then we drove a little further and a bunch of ducks came up on the pond as geese flew off another pond. I realized this place had become excellent hunting grounds. Now, I rent land on Thornton Hill and Miller farm for hunting and get more money that way than I did from using or renting it for cattle grazing.
Sure it’s fun to blow things up when you’re 10, but it’s also damn fun to see the wildlife come back to an area and realize you’re sitting on a hunting gold mine. Let the rodent do the work. Let beavers be beavers.
Tommy Bruce: When did you really start to think differently about all of this?
Bill Fletcher: My “aha moment” came last year when I went to see my daughter who lives on the Miller farm. We had put up a dam to create a small one acre pond. The beavers had gotten into it and repaired the pond to a certain extent, and expanded it by three or four times. I thought it was really pretty and might be good for both farming and the natural habitat. But, then my daughter pointed out that a spring she hadn’t seen before had come back. That was my “aha moment”. From that moment on, I started to explore my own ideas about what to do to slow down the flow of water away from Rappahannock. I talked to a lot of people. I met with Amy Johnson from the Smithsonian Institution who told me about all the rare orchids and birds we had. Together we’d compare notes with other land owners. I reached out to Jim Abdo to talk through my evolving thought process. He introduce me to Bill Somerlot who is an expert in the field and has helped me through the whole process of discovery. Eventually I met with John Odenkirk, an expert with fisheries and a personal friend, who lives in the County. That’s when a lot of this really started to come together for me. I then met with Bryan Hofmann, Deputy Director with Friends of the Rappahannock, who confirmed that, yes, beavers retain water on the land, something we really need to do in Rappahannock.
It’s wonderful that not I don’t recognize a single name he mentions but I know exactly what they talked about. And I talk about it all the time.
Tommy Bruce: Do you have a specific proposal you want people to think about:
Bill Fletcher: In a nutshell, I think we should get some grants together to plan how to bring the beaver back and deploy Beaver Dam Analogs (BDA’s) or leaky weirs to slow the flow away from our lands. Hopefully, we’d create the conditions for nature to do its thing.
Tommy Bruce: What would you like to see the state of Virginia do?
Bill Fletcher: Well, Virginia has a program, and a good one I’m sure, to fence the streams and rivers, but I don’t think fences alone will replenish our aquifers or stope the erosion down into the Bay. The State should get involved in a BDA program, and provide economic incentives to farmers who help keep and clean the water in Rappahannock. Maybe, even make water conservation a condition of land use. We also need some help with record keeping. For instance, the reports to the county on average rainfall differ by a lot. Without adequate record keeping there can’t be a reliable determination of what’s really going on.
Okay, the purists in me says you don’t need BDAs you just need to stop blowing up B’s. But I appreciate so much your peering into the light and I can understand why it’s valuable to exercise a little more control over where the B’s make themselves at home.
Tommy Bruce: At heart you are a farmer. What are the challenges for farmers in Rappahannock? What else should they consider doing with their land?
Bill Fletcher: I love the land almost as much as I love my children, but, the cost of doing business keeps going up. We don’t have Fauquier loam in Rappahannock and some of our lands have been polluted by heavy metals from coal fired plants. So, we have our challenges. We have no prime agricultural land. Besides, the cost of farming keeps rising along with the taxes that have tripled at least since the 1970’s. Actually the tax baseline is higher than the agricultural value of much of our land. We have tried everything. We tried crop land, beans, corn, wheat, oats, rye, and yeah it is crazy.
I also believe everybody should be self-sufficient. I mean, if the world goes to hell, I keep enough food and fuel and generators to run my farm for six months. It is expensive but I don’t trust the government. Everything’s a vote away from going to hell.
I’d love nothing more than to keep Rappahannock pristine and beautiful and lush. But, we’ve got all kinds of pressure now on us. I think farmers should be able to look at other uses, including solar, to keep the land as open as it is today while still making a living. Personally, I want a solar field on my farm to run my farm efficiently, energy-wise. That being said, I’m not an expert but it makes sense to look into these ideas. I think Rappahannock needs to be open to this kind of thinking.
What’s your mailing address? I think I’m sending you a book today. Keep an eye on the mailbox.
Tommy Bruce: Will it be a challenge to bring along people in the County?
Bill Fletcher: Well, I just say use your common sense. Do your own reading and check out the research being done in the US. I’d start with “Beaver dam analogues drive heterogeneous groundwater–surface water interactions” from the journal Hydrologic Processes. That piece told me a lot. Not so long ago, I didn’t know about beaver dam analogs or even the leaky weirs they’ve been using for a number of year in England and Australia. And, water seemed to be plentiful. But, all that has changed, and we need to seize the opportunity to lead the way.
Tommy Bruce: Any last thought?
Bill Fletcher: We could be the greenest county, we could have the healthiest environment, and Rappahannock could be a tremendous asset. But, our land needs to be healthy with plenty of water for farming to flourish and preserve the viewsheds we all care about. It’s a trickle down economy… just like water. If all our water goes away then all our money will go away. We’ve got to do something to stop that and bring Rappahannock back. You know me, I don’t want to change anything, but like the rest of us, I’ve got to survive. And, if the farms can’t survive, Rappahannock ,as we know it, won’t survive.
And that’s it. If the water doesn’t survive the people won’t survive. And Beavers will help you keep water on the land. And all you gotta do is stop blowing them up. That seems a fair trade doesn’t it?
When the old timers come to Beavers, I get very very happy.
Here we are again, stuck in the middle of a drought that threatens famine and financial ruin. The headlines scream, “Every … Last … Drop” as we once again argue over who gets what from a limited supply of water.
And I wonder, once again, what about “Every … First … Drop.” In my experience, Oregon does a terrible job of protecting the sources of water. Thousands of feeder streams across the state have no legal protections because they have no resident fish. That they provide the initial water to the larger streams and rivers that do have fish seems not to matter.
Hmmm I wonder how we could possibly save every first drop! We’d need a helper to hold onto that much water. Any suggestions?
We can, however, look at the situation that gave us such abundant water 200 years ago. Recent research shows that the best natural conservation enhancement to our water sources came from a rich beaver population. During settlement those beavers were removed, along with all the small pools and ponds they had created that kept the water cool and flowing during the hottest of summers. Then gold was discovered and the banks of virtually every creek in Southern Oregon and northern California were washed away by hydraulic mining that continued until the 1960s.
Let’s bring back the beavers, quit clearcutting these steep hillsides with thin soils, afford stream protection on every water source to the headwaters. Let’s take care of the very first drop so we don’t end up arguing over the very last drop.
YES! Well said Jack! You know I was trying to find the nonprofit where Jack is Land Steward and I realized the purchased BLM land that is now being managed is in the same town as my aunt. Jacksonville Oregon. Coincidence? Just saying.
on September 15 – exactly two days from now – Timberborn Early Access begins. To keep you up to date with what to expect from the game in its new incarnation, we’ll be counting down to the release date with daily previews on different aspects of our beaver city-builder.
It’s post-apocalypse now, which means the drought (previously: “dry season”) eventually comes. The strength of water sources on the map begins to fade and after a while, the water sources “turn off” completely while the evaporation continues. The river beds gradually dry up and with them – the surrounding areas. Fields and forests turn yellow and will wither unless you have a way of preventing that with a clever combination of dams, floodgates, irrigation towers, canals, water dumps etc.
The Burgoyne watershed — now known by its original Cowichan name, Xwaaqw’um — is one of the only places on the island where an entire stream system is protected parkland. Despite the changes wrought by early loggers and farmers, the valley’s waterways continue to provide homes for trout, salamanders, tree frogs, iridescent swallows and great blue herons. So, when the opportunity arose to use her expertise in wetlands restoration as part of a larger ecological and cultural revitalization in the park, Annschild jumped at the chance.
When a culvert blew out a section of East Street in Belchertown on July 18, I set out to investigate. As we walked up the closed road, we saw bits of blacktop and large branches strewn across several lawns. Large melon-sized cobbles had been transported hundreds of yards (a feat which requires very fast flowing water!) into gardens and driveways.
Tommy Bruce: Water is a theme in your life. Is it one for Rappahannock?
Tommy Bruce: So, how can BDAs help landowners in Rappahannock?
