BEAVERS ARE GREAT BUT THEY CAN’T CURE CANCER

I’ve been waiting for this, and apparently so has most of the media because this morning it’s running on Yahoo news and a bunch of other recycling sites. Just remember beavers, you had a day in the sun, a week really. It was grand.

Beavers can do wonders for nature – but we should be realistic about these benefits extending to people

The beaver is a unique ecosystem engineer that can create a landscape that would otherwise not exist, thanks to the animal’s ability to build dams. As we experience more frequent heatwaves and drought, the potential role of beavers in safeguarding against these risks has captured widespread attention.

Beaver habitats are claimed to lower local stream and air temperatures, and by maintaining water supplies, provide insurance against drought. Greater water storage may also improve the resilience of a landscape towards wildfire.

However, it is important to consider the significance of beaver habitats as a solution to our changing climate from both human and wildlife perspectives. It’s not as simple as saying beavers can protect human society against the effects of extreme weather.

I don’t believe ANYONE is saying that, you silly person. Of course we need more solutions and tools than just beavers. The point is that beavers can HELP if we let them.

Beaver ponds and wetlands can cover wider areas and store more water than the stream that would flow without them. However, beavers are restricted to relatively small streams.

To achieve a water capacity large enough to supplement human supplies, beavers would have to construct an unrealistically large number of ponds across the same catchment. Even then, the water storage would be dispersed across many shallow ponds, making extraction for use in a water supply network unrealistic.

What an increase in beaver ponds can do is provide more refuges for wildlife at a local level, while allowing the slow release of water downstream during dry periods. Such refuges can be critical for wildlife during a drought, and so help preserve an area’s biodiversity.

Greater water storage will also increase an ecosystem’s resilience to climate change. This has been demonstrated during this summers drought. Beaver wetlands in Devon’s River Otter have irrigated the surrounding area and kept vegetation alive, preserving a habitat that many animals depend on.

Unrealistically large number of ponds? Unrealistic according to whom? Beavers aren’t daunted. They can take on plenty of unrealistic jobs. And used to handle much much more. What is UNREALISTIC you mean is the notion that humans could possibly share that much territory with beavers to allow them to MAKE those ponds. And I agree with your unwritten argument. “In order for beavers to make a meaningful contribution we’d need to start killing them less, and that’s unlikely to happen.”

Bodies of water can also reduce the air temperature surrounding them because their evaporation has a cooling effect. However, unless the water bodies are very large, or high in number, this easing tends to diminish rapidly with distance from the water. This would make it difficult to rely upon beaver ponds for cooling benefits for human settlements.

Beavers also tend to open up the canopies of nearby forests by felling trees during the construction of dams. This can reduce shading and allow more direct sun exposure, which complicates any potential cooling effects.

However, felling can also increase habitat complexity, supporting a mixture of meadows and wet woodland. The natural disturbance caused by beavers can create floodplain woodlands that are wilder and wetter, allowing greater biodiversity. In some cases, this can also slow the flow of water and improve water quality.

This same process of opening up the canopy can also increase local water temperatures. However, this can be heavily moderated by the interaction between surface water and groundwater.

This means the outcome for water temperatures will be highly river, dam, and pond dependent. For this reason, research into the thermal impact of beaver habitats has proved inconclusive.

No. No. No. The research has proved inconclusive because some researchers did it wrong and refuse to learn from their mistakes. Measuring the top inch of the pond temperature is the WRONG way to do this. And last time I checked the Climate change papers was in a published in a peer reviewed journal. Which your article certainly isn’t.

Wildfires have been extensive across Europe this summer. Research has shown how the preservation of beaver habitats can improve the fire-resistance of the landscape.

During wildfire, the area of vegetation density loss in beaver habitats was approximately three times smaller than in areas without beavers in the western USA.

However, questions remain as to whether this protection could ever expand to the scale necessary for human settlements. Even if this is not realistic, beaver habitats provide crucial protection for local habitat and wildlife against wildfire.

I do not think that question has ever been raised. The point isn’t that beaver scan FIX fires and droughts any more than wearing seat belts can prevent car accidents. The point is that they can HELP if we let them. Let them help.

This summer has also brought new climate extremes and a prolonged period of drought. With more of this predicted, the debate surrounding mitigation measures is growing. Beavers enjoy enthusiastic support in this regard.

However, it would be wise to temper expectations for the role of beavers as a drought solution for human settlements. Nevertheless, by offering a local buffer against the ravages of drought, heatwaves, and wildfire, beaver habitats carry the potential to help stimulate nature recovery and reverse biodiversity loss.

In the UK, beavers have recently received legal protection, but face a future of expansion into human landscapes. The decades ahead will require some nuanced landscape decisions that can incorporate beaver habitats into large-scale nature recovery and restoration schemes. Beavers are showing that their impacts can offer added levels of ecosystem resilience to a changing climate that we would be wise to embrace.

All we ever said. All that was ever argued. Beavers can help if we help them help. End of argument. Oh and your photo isn’t a beaver, which means you don’t actually have any information or knowledge about what you’re spouting about.

OHIO HAS A BEAVER SIGN?

heidi08 Beavers September 26, 2022

Even Ohio is getting the message about beavers. A friend sent this from a recent trip to Cincinatti. Of course it doesn’t say anything actually positive about the beavers fighting fires or saving water or where to go for more information about these superheroes but it’s a start, and I can see a little ecological vandalism in their future…can’t you?

IT’S MY PARTY AND I’LL LIE IF I WANT TO

heidi08 Beavers September 21, 2022

Good morning beaver nation. This morning just happens to be my birthday so I thought, in addition to all the stupid and terrible fall news about beavers out there I would do something I never never do. Which is tell lies about beavers. I’m not sure I’ll be as good at is as the media but I’m going to try. After 15 exhausting years of trying to set the record straight it seems like a nice change of pace for me.

Beavers are poisonous rodents that live in the dams they create to catch fish. They have gills beneath their tails so they can breath underwater while they work The males are easily told from the females because they’re the only ones that build dams. They find their food using echolocation which they emit from a special gland in their foreheads. They are extremely aggressive and the adult males fight for the right to mate with the herd by hitting each other with those tails, The battle lasts for several days and thwacking can be heard for miles but has never been filmed.

Beavers are excellent diggers and tunnel for miles under the soil, especially under the foundations of buildings which they dislike. They are clumsy swimmers but the young learn from their mothers who dress them in water wings. Males are too dangerous to be with the young and will kill them on sight so the mothers care for the young briefly in polyandrous colonies. A colony can have several hundred beavers. It is very dangerous to approach or photograph them because of the poison, which during the wind has been known to waft like spores.

Beavers have several rows of large teeth like their cousin the shark which fall out and regrow constantly throughout their life span. They use those teeth to chew down trees which they use to build the dams they live in, giving rise to their nickname “tree sharks”. All the chewing gives them terrible toothaches which they have to constantly treat by eating willow bark which contains acetylsalicylic acid, the property which occurs naturally in aspirin. This dulls the pain and allows them to continue their assault.

Beavers are highly destructive, in addition to burrowing under foundations and killing trees beavers spend their time emiting giardia, causing climate change by ruining the Tundra and releasing methane in large quantities. They breed several times a year and a single female can have as many as 100 beaver kits every spring. Fortunately most of them starve or are eaten because beavers are terrible parents and rarely attend to their young.

Beavers are often referred to as what is known as a “Keystone Species”. This means that they use their dexterous fore paws to hurl small rocks at other animals often “Keystoning” them to death. It is a very bloody thing to watch because all the beavers gather round to help. They change the ecosystem with these grim attacks and thin the herd.

Castor Canadensis is a well known shapeshifters and can change its appearance when photographed: sometimes looking like a nutria, an otter, or a groundhog. There is an incident this very morning where they appear to be a marmot. No one knows why they change their appearance so rapidly but scientists assume it has to do with their noxious personalities which must be carefully disguised. I would tell you more about beavers but they really aren’t very interesting to study and scientists have given up watching their dull. cruel lives.

~~I recommend you learn more about otters. Which are adorable.~~

Now that was fun.

I WONDER HOW WE CAN MAKE MORE WETLANDS

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact, Beaver ponds, Beavers, Beavers and Wetlands September 19, 2022

Gosh marshes and wetlands are useful and valuable for biodiversity, but they’re really really hard to make. Whatever can we do?

The Outside Story: Freshwater marshes are biodiversity hotspots

In addition to providing outstanding wildlife habitat, freshwater marshes perform several vital ecological functions. Marsh plants capture sediments running off the land from roads, development, and farm fields and filter out excess nutrients that would otherwise degrade water quality. These wetlands store floodwaters, control erosion, and recharge groundwater supplies. Marshes also offer recreational value and are popular places for paddling, birdwatching, hunting, and fishing.

Unfortunately, only in recent decades have people recognized the value of marshes and other wetlands and, to some extent, given them legal protection. Since European settlement, many marshes have been filled for agriculture or development, polluted by industrial run-off, or converted to ponds or lakes by dams. In some locales, there have been restoration efforts, but it is challenging to replicate a natural marsh, although beaver activity can create new marshes or change them to create other forms of wetlands.

Hey I remember spending hours next to beaver created wetlands. Watching herons and egrets and merganser and wood duck and mink and otter and frog. I remember counting how many species I saw in a single morning. And that was in the middle of a town.

Tell me more about how hard wetlands are to create?

Marsh plants have special adaptations that enable them to survive the wet conditions. For example, cattails and arrowhead can exchange gases between their emergent leaves and submerged roots. The type of vegetation that grows in a particular marsh depends on hydrology and soil. In shallow marshes, the water level varies from just a few inches to a foot deep. The soil may be always saturated, or it may be flooded periodically. Deeper marshes are permanently flooded, with large areas of open water. Marsh soils range from decomposed muck to high- organic mineral soil.

Along the edges of lakes, ponds, and rivers, marsh vegetation often grows in distinct bands, influenced by water depth and exposure. Sedges, for example, will grow in moist to saturated soil. Cattails and pickerelweed, with its distinctive stems of purple flowers, prefer standing water through most of the growing season. Aquatic bulrush and wild rice are found in deeper water.

These and several other plants, such as floating duckweed and arrow arum, form the foundation of the marsh food web. Waterfowl and other birds feed on the plants’ seeds, fruit, and vegetation, and the plants’ decomposed remains nourish a host of invertebrates such as snails, worms, crayfish, and insects. The invertebrates in turn provide food for frogs, fish, turtles, and songbirds, which feed water snakes, raccoons, herons, osprey, and bald eagles, among others. Muskrats are common marsh residents, eating the rhizomes (roots) of cattails and water lilies and building their dome-shaped winter lodges with cattail leaves. Mink slide through the lodges’ underwater entrances to prey on muskrats. Many birds, including hard-to-see bitterns, nest in marshes, and red-winged blackbirds often attach their nests to old cattail stalks.

Gosh that sounds beautiful! And familiar. I want to introduce you to a friend of mine…I’m guessing he can help.

LE CASTOR EN FRANCE’

heidi08 Beavers September 18, 2022

French=American Suzanne Husky has really been bitten by the beaver bug. She has taken it as HER personal mission to explain the returning beaver population to the French and she’s doing an amazing job. Here’s some amazing artwork from her recent show.