Things seem out of control with my keyboard this morning. It is better for us all I type very little until peace is restored. I will just leave you with this photo recently taken from Shocken Hill in Sonoma. You know, in the state that Joseph Grinnell wrote didn’t have beavers.
“Beaver have recently been caught within half a mile of the mission”
Sir George Simpson Hudson Bay Company 1842
I cannot tell you how many media outlets have recently sent me an alert with the headline “Beavers offer lessons about managing water in a changing climate,” Most recently it was picked up by phys,org. It will be the best beaver news delivered in January for sure, One of the many sites that ran it shared this photo that I thought was beautiful. Let it continue to dominate the beaver news cycle a little longer, I’m sure we’ll get back to them melting the arctic soon.
Have I got a family to introduce to you today! Meet the Sorensens from Elko Nevada, Their family has been ranching the land for 3 generations. But they are the ones that have learned something different. You’re going to just LOVE this story.
In the 1940s, the Sorensen family planted roots in Nevada, raising thousands of sheep and some cattle on a ranch where the Ruby and East Humboldt mountain ranges meet in the northeastern corner of the state. Their descendents are still there.
Third-generation Nevada rancher Jared Sorensen and his wife Selena are raising their family of nine children, who play important roles on the Secret Pass Ranch, where winter winds are unforgiving and a blanket of snow glimmers across the region. Encompassing 10,000 acres (and an additional 12,000 acres the Sorensens lease for grazing), it sits between the mountain ranges, the valley opening up to vast fields where cattle graze. The Sorensen home, an unassuming 100-year-old house, is mostly hidden from the highway by trees. Across the way at the foot of the Ruby Mountains, a stream flows along the highway. (more…)
There has been such loud response to Monday’s Minnesota research that I have been waiting for an interview or two to pop up. WTIP community radio was first with this excellent audio recorded with the study author and host Joe Friedrichs. It really is compelling stuff. Especially when he says that beavers keep water on the landscape AND when we kill them it reduces water on the landscape, but then says “I’m not going to say anything about whether or not we should keep killing them”. HAHAHA
A new study shows the critical role beavers play in regulating water storage along the North Shore.
The project reviewed data and photographs from the Kadunce and Cascade rivers in Cook County, as well as the Manitou, Split Rock and Knife rivers down the shore.
The study is considered one of the most extensive reviews analyzing the extent to which beavers are essential for freshwater conservation and ecosystem stability by creating and preserving aquatic and wetland environments in Minnesota.
Way back in 1993 we purchased a Navarro canoe. It was a lofty goal to own such a thing, We had seen them at REI and stood enviously at their side for hours. 1000 more dollars than we had to our name and us not exactly living on a lake we had to wait until I was done with school. Jon drove all the way to Santa Cruz to save 50 dollars at the time and drove back in terror of it falling off the car. One of the very first treks we made was up Lagunitas River off the Tomales River in point reyes. A hard launch but a beautifully familiar landscape. I remember black berries that were as big as apples sucking up water from the banks. And I remember something else too.
A beaver dam.
