Well I tried to work the words pond leveler and depredation into the beaver conversation, You heard me try I even gave the reporter Glynnis Hood’s flow device paper, thinking it might hold the attention of a Ct anadian, But I guess editors only want relocation fairy stories, At least I succeeded In getting the reporter to talk to Rick. That’s something right?

Beavers are superhero rodents in California’s fight against climate change

The landscape is missing the redwoods that towered into the sky before loggers arrived. And it’s missing the beavers that flourished before trappers nearly extinguished them from what is now California.

The lack of beavers is not for lack of trying. Ms. Beesley is a fisheries biologist for the Yurok Tribe, whose ancestral territory lies in the coastal waters and redwood forests of northwestern California. Pioneers in environmental restoration in the state, the Yurok have built artificial beaver dams and installed logjams to slow the destructive energy of waterways like McGarvey Creek, all in hopes of restoring past flows, bringing back beavers and, with their help, improving habitat for salmon.

Now, the rest of California is trying to do the same, elevating the lowly beaver into a much-wanted global warming warrior.

Research has shown that watersheds inhabited by beavers are wetter and greener, more resistant to wildfires and more productive for agriculture. That has made them newly coveted agents of environmental healing as tinder-dry forests burn in great masses and vast parts of the continent go parched from a worsening drought.he

I’m all for seeing beavers as the heroes they are, Now if we could just stop killing them every time they show up for work.

Beavers are remarkable rodents, capable of surviving in environments far from the boreal rivers and lakes where they are familiar to Canadians. “They thrive in desert,” said Emily Fairfax, a scholar at California State University Channel Islands. Her research has shown beavers’ value as firefighters, their dams sustaining greening oases less likely to burn in forest blazes.

As California looks for new ways to confront worsening drought, Prof. Fairfax thinks beavers “have an absolutely enormous potential” to help. The current North American beaver population is likely a tenth of what it was before the arrival of the European fur trade. Restoring even part of that could result in “a lot of water” stored on the landscape, she said.

The effort to bring back the beaver in California began with rewriting history. For decades, the state relied on habitat maps informed by research completed after trappers had largely exterminated beavers. It took years of studying ancient dam remains, scouring old newspaper accounts and documenting terms for beaver in Indigenous languages to prove that beavers actually once lived across most of the state.

That was “what we needed to get the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to stop treating them as a pest, but as a potential ecosystem engineer,” said Rick Lanman, an oncologist who led the effort.

Hurray Rick!!! And that reference to scouring newspaper articles. That was ME. So I  guess I did make it in there indirectly.

Nonetheless, California authorities issued permits to get rid of 3,000 beavers last year, often by killing them – although there are no statistics on successful exterminations.

And that was me. That’s something, right?

Beaver advocates are pushing for a three-strikes rule, where beavers are only killed after attempts first to live with them – by protecting valuable trees and installing devices to prevent flooding from dams – and, if that fails, to relocate them.

“The beaver is basically a stormtrooper to come in and support our living lifeboats, the watersheds,” said Brock Dolman, a researcher who has helped co-ordinate a Bring Back the Beaver campaign. (He gives Canadian nickels as gifts.).

“We think our watersheds need thousands and thousands of new dams. We want them to be maybe three to four feet tall, made of sticks and wood,” he said. “And we want a whole crew of mammals with sharp teeth who are managing them for free.”

Beavers can, however, provide at best a partial solution to the enormous task of securing sufficient water to sate the thirst of the state’s industry, agriculture and human residents. “Is L.A. going to swap over to beaver water for their supply any time soon?” Mr. Dolman said.

“Don’t think so.”

Neither do I. I don’t even expect them to go to THREE STRIKES. I mean if it even required ONE strike to kill a beaver that would be monumental progress. Baby steps people.

The Yurok, too, have found that for beavers to transform a landscape, the landscape itself needs to be transformed first.

“We need to get in there to repair the damage and destruction from the last 100 years,” said Mr. Myers, the Yurok vice chairman. Only then “can we get to a place for beavers to move in – so they’ll actually have a place to thrive.”

WHAT information you feed into the word processor it always comes out saying basically that, Like a magic eightball you keep shaking over and over.

Wonderful reporting from Canada. I would say Emily’s beaver spiel has definitely improved with use. Much more emphasis on coexistence and you don’t need to move a beaver to benefit from its ecosystem services. Just to be clear, the documentary Emily mentions seeing on PBS called Leave it to Beaver was first made in Canada and called “The Beaver Whisperers” slightly altered to fit audiences and formats. It was the hard work and vision of Jari Osborne. This is why cross pollination is important.

An unlikely ally in the face of wildfires and droughts: the humble beaver

In the face of increasing wildfires and droughts, scientists are looking to a highly skilled “environmental engineer” to help fight climate change: the industrious beaver.

“They build these dams, which slow the water down, they dig canals that spread the water out, and ultimately they just give it time to sink into the earth like a big old sponge,” said Emily Fairfax, an assistant professor of environmental science and resource management at California State University Channel Islands.

“Whenever you have a drought or a flood or a fire, it’s a much more resilient system to that disturbance,” she told The Current’s guest host Nahlah Ayed. 

Fairfax co-authored a research paper calling beavers a key part of a climate action plan for North America, and calling for greater efforts at co-existence and repopulation in specific regions. The paper was published in the journal WIREs Water in April. 

Beavers are the new shiny thing and we’re getting closer to the right messages out there. We still have a long way to go. Let’s keep it up.

Because I entered my doctoral program with a masters degree I had the opportunity to waive a year of classes by taking massive comprehensive exams. It was five monumental tests over two surreal days. It required months of review and the few of us who attempted it worked in groups one subject at a time. I had never faced anything like it. It was the kind of exam where you went at night to review your score on the wall to see if you passed or failed. It was terrifying. And no one I ever met had passed all five.

The night before my first exam I had a nightmare that I was in my most difficult class and there was some unknown demon growling outside the closed door. The five students beside me were frozen in terror and the instructor pointed at me to open it. I could not refuse. I remember standing with difficulty in the dream and balling my hands into fists that felt absurdly weak before pulling it open to face the threat.

Sometimes we all feel unequipped in life, Others are smarter or faster or more beautiful than we are. Looking around at what others have to offer can make us feel inadequate, unprepared and not up to the job. It doesn’t matter how small you feel. There is work to be done. That’s what I knew when I opened that door. It doesn’t matter how weak you are.  Roll up your sleeves and do it anyway.

When I flung open the door I thankfully woke up and went on to pass all five. I remember that as I see this and think of what D, H, Lawrence said. “I never saw a wild creature sorry for itself”