From: The Revelator

Nature’s Supermarket: How Beavers Help Birds — And Other Species

New research shows that these ecosystem engineers can be an “ally in stopping the decline of biodiversity.”

Researchers in Poland have found another reason to love beavers: They benefit wintering birds.

The rodents, once maligned as destructive pests, have been getting a lot of positive press lately. And for good reason. Beavers are ecosystem engineers. As they gather trees and dam waterways, they create wetlands, increase soil moisture, and allow more light to reach the ground. That drives the growth of herbaceous and shrubby vegetation, which benefits numerous animals.

Bats, who enjoy the buffet of insects found along beaver ponds, are among the beneficiaries. So too are butterflies who come for the diversity of flowering plants in the meadows beavers create.

Some previous research has found that this helping hand also extends to birds. For example, a 2008 study in the western United States showed that the vegetation that grows along beaver-influenced streams provided needed habitat for migratory songbirds, many of whom are in decline.

Pile of branches of beaver dam in green wetland. — A beaver dam in Bierbza Marshes, Poland. Photo: Francesco Veronesi (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The new study published in the journal Forest Ecology and Management found further evidence by focusing on birds in winter. The researchers looked at assemblages of wintering birds on 65 beaver sites and 65 reference sites in a range of temperate forest habitat across Poland. Winter can be a challenging time for birds in that environment, as they need to reduce energy expenditures in the cold weather and find habitat that has high-quality food and roosting sites.

Wintering birds, it turns out, find those qualities near beaver habitat.

The researchers found a greater abundance of birds and more species richness near areas where beavers had modified waterways. Both were highest closest to the shores of beaver ponds.

“All beaver-induced modifications of the existing habitat may have influence on bird assemblage,” says Michal Ciach, a study co-author and a professor in the department of Forest Biodiversity at the University of Agriculture in Krakow, Poland. “But different bird species may rely on different habitat traits that emerge due to beaver activity. It’s like a supermarket.”

Beaver crouched by water's edge. — The Eurasian beaver. Photo: Per Harald Olsen/NTNU (CC BY 2.0)

The growing research about beavers suggests a greater need to protect their habitat and understand their important role in the ecosystem.

“Beaver sites should be treated as small nature reserves,” says Ciach. “The beaver, like no other species, is our ally in stopping the decline of biodiversity.”

Read the whole article here.

A more practical and peaceful strategy emerging in the land know for beaver!/?

Dam nuisance: St. Albert explores beaver-habitat flood mitigation

The City of St. Albert is upping its engineering-ante in an ongoing duel with the local beaver population by installing some new water infrastructure safeguards over the next few years.

By Jack Farrell at the St. Albert Gazette

The City of St. Albert plans to add a couple of new tools to its water-management tool belt over the next few years to counteract problems caused by the local beaver population.

Melissa Logan, the city’s environmental coordinator, said staff will install pond levellers in high-priority spots throughout Carrot Creek and the Sturgeon River, starting this summer.

Unbeknownst to the estimated 16 individual beavers who call these rivers home, pond levellers allow water to flow through dams to prevent flooding, Logan said.

“The pond levellers you can put right in the middle of a dam and it will keep the water flowing through so that we don’t get flooding, but still allow the beaver to create some of the habitat that it needs,” she said.

“It’s just a method of coexisting with beavers on the landscape instead of getting rid of them entirely.”

0903-beaver-management — City staff are getting some new tools to counteract regular infrastructure damage caused by the estimated 16 local beavers. FILE/Photo

“Best-case scenario is that beavers are still able to be active on the landscape and do their natural water management,” Logan said of what she hopes the new tools will accomplish.

“Protection of our infrastructure in the long term is really what we’re looking for.”

Logan said staff will install the tools in high-priority areas this summer, and in lower priority areas over the next few years.

Major cost savings

Glynnis Hood, an environmental biology and ecology professor at the University of Alberta’s Augustana campus in Camrose and author of The Beaver Manifesto (2011), told The Gazette she has seen pond levellers save municipalities thousands of dollars.

“There’s cost savings, there’s ecological advantages, (and) there’s infrastructure advantages for reducing maintenance needs,” said Hood.

“For instance, in Cooking Lake-Blackfoot, we installed about 13 (pond levellers) and then we monitored them over seven years. The maintenance that was required … was maybe pull a few sticks out here and there and they worked really well,” she said.

“The cost savings was in the tens of thousands of dollars, and if we added on some other economic drivers … it could even be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars of cost savings just for those 13 sites that otherwise have been chronically flooded for over 10 years.”

Hood said pond levellers, culvert protectors, and other beaver-damage mitigation can improve how people in the community view their neighbourhood beavers.

Beavers as extreme-weather mitigators

As part of an ongoing five-year project, Hood and Dr. Cherie Westbrook from the University of Saskatchewan are studying how beavers and their dams might help mitigate extreme climate events, such as floods and droughts.

“Over 60 per cent of the beaver dams actually held even in the 2013 flood that devastated Calgary and downstream areas,” she said. “Many of the beaver dams were only partially breached or didn’t breach at all.”

“They actually played a role in holding back some of that floodwater or at least delayed or slowed its downstream flow.”

Hood said it’s too early to say definitively if beaver dams could be a significant tool during extreme-weather events in Alberta, but current data and modelling looks promising.

“In climate change, you’re going to get more extreme-weather events, like these big rainfall events, but you’re also going to get drought, and beavers (might) play a role in a natural and nature-based solution for some of these things.”

To learn more about beavers and, as Logan described, their unmatched water management engineering ability, Hood was recently featured in a TED-Talk YouTube video.

Read the whole article here.

Sadly, sometimes beaver fall victim to flooding as well:

Winter storms hurt Central Coast beaver populations

KCBX | By Gabriela Fernandez, Benjamin Purper

The recent winter storms on the Central Coast didn’t just affect humans — they’ve also damaged the habitat of the local beaver population.

Audrey Taub is the Executive Director of the SLO Beaver Brigade, who describe themselves as “beaver advocates.” It’s a group of local biologists, science enthusiasts and community members who educate people about the rodents and the role they play in our ecosystem.

While talking and teaching about beavers is often a joyful experience, Taub said there has been some sad news recently about local beaver populations.

“The big rains pretty much washed everything out. This particular storm definitely displaced them,” Taub said.

“We found one dead juvenile. So they really can’t live on their own until they’re at least two. So these one-year-olds just didn’t have a chance.”

The SLO Beaver Brigade helped paint, “The Beaver Mural” on a local coffee shop they meet at once a week.

Taub said after the heavy rain, local beavers will have to rebuild their dams in places like streams and ponds. She said it’s not clear how long that will take, but she’s “excited for the whole community to watch the ponds develop,” Taub said.

Beavers play a major role in fighting climate change by building dams, which helps create and restore wetlands.

That’s important, because it’s estimated that globally, wetlands can store about 190 million cars’ worth of emissions every year.

Cooper Lienhart is the SLO Beaver Brigade’s Restorations Director.

“I used to think we would engineer our way out of the problem and make synthetic trees to suck CO2 back out of the atmosphere. But yeah, I learned that wetlands are [the] most efficient land ecosystem at absorbing and storing CO2,” Lienhart said.

Last week the SLO Beaver Brigade received the California Coastal Commission’s WHALE TAIL grant. Taub and Lienhart said the money will be used to offer educational tours, river cleanups, and translations for Spanish-speakers interested in learning about beavers.

More information on the emissions-fighting rodents is online at slobeaverbrigade.com.

Read the whole article here.
And there is more news from the SLO Beaver Brigade: The First Annual SLO County Beaver Festival!

Beaver Festival Info:
The SLO Beaver Brigade invites eager beavers of all ages to the First Annual SLO County Beaver Festival on Saturday April 1 in SLO Mission Plaza from 10 am to 3 pm. Kids are welcome and encouraged to come learn about beavers with us! The festival will be a celebration of our local beavers with live music, speakers, food and drink, educational displays, crafts and games, and local booths
Why do we celebrate beavers? Because we see them as climate change superheroes! Beavers build dams in our creeks and rivers, turning them into lush wetlands. This SLOWS the water down, allowing it to SPREAD out and SINK into our aquifers (slow it, spread it, sink it)! Not only does this help us in droughts, but their wetlands also create refuge from wildfires. Come join us on April 1st to learn about all this and more at our first ever SLO Beaver Festival.

And for the last bit of news, there is a very lively and informative interview with Ben Goldfarb by Taya Jae at The Pen and The Sword.

Bob

Last week I received my review copy of Ben Goldfarb’s book. Apparently a few minor changes and corrections will get made in the finished version, and the artwork will be added, but it’s basically the almost-entirely-final product. The publisher thought a review from this beaver website might be useful so we all get a sneak preview now. Hopefully this will encourage you all to pre-order this excellent book. If you do, you help the book rise on Amazon and your copy should arrive soon enough to bring it to the festival and have him sign it! I thought some some of our beaver photos would help deliver the message,

Here goes:

Every now and then a well-written and cheerfully-researched book comes along that changes the conversation forever. Suddenly no one is asking whether DDT is harmful or we didn’t do enough to prevent 911, they are just discussing what to do about it now and where to start first.

This might just be one of those books. With Eager: The surprising secret lives of beavers and why they matter, accomplished author Ben Goldfarb lays out a Michener-esque sweeping look at an America that was burrowed, shaped and watered by beavers. He uses a convincing cast of characters to tell this compelling story – characters as varied as they are persuasive. From the “high-spirited and freckled” fluvial geomorphologist Rebekah Levine in Montana, to the “geyser of colorful catch phrases” Joe Wheaton in Utah, or the fish biologist with the “gentle manner of painting instructor”, Carol Evans of Nevada, each tell their part of a highly relevant ecological drama that we never even realized we were waiting for.

I have a lot of favorite parts to this book, but an enduring winner is the unparalleled illumination Ben shines on a pre-settlement America when beavers and their dams were everywhere and complex interlacing streams looked more like ‘a bowl of spaghetti’ than individual channels due to their ubiquitous work – my most stark and unfavorite part is similarly unforgettable – the devastating near apocalyptic impact that the fur trade had in drying our national landscape.

Besides introducing the reader to beaver believers from every walk of life all over the country and beyond, and stacking the courtroom with deftly-delivered scientific arguments from every field, Goldfarb is a careful archeologist who unearths historical passages that introduce a new understanding of past figures and their thoughts about a beaver-made country. Like a special lens attached to a telescope, his writing becomes a prism through which beavers shape our past, our present and our future.

Of course, this book didn’t change my conversation. Because I talk about beavers every day of my life and have now since the Bush administration. But it did introduce me elegantly to a chorus of advocates and arguments for beavers even I never knew existed. From flow devices to St. Francis Satyr’s to the limitations of beavers in Yellowstone, reading through these pages I was reminded viscerally of the early days I spent watching the then-unknown family in Alhambra Creek, calling to mind the engrossing, awakening, immersive feeling of discovery.

You deserve discovery too. The book is currently available for pre-order on Amazon, and listed as number one in ecology. Early orders boost its status and mean more people will be convinced to buy it which mean more people will be able to learn about beavers.

I am personally overjoyed that this book has been written, and thrilled to see it come together in such a powerful way. I am also happy that Ben will be at the festival and that Martinez plays a memorable part in its story. Reading about myself was disconcerting for all the reasons you might expect, but I will say I that I was heartened by this in the acknowledgments at the end:

“ Heidi Perryman has supplied me an endless stream of stories, sources, studies and quips since our first email exchange. This book would be far drier without her involvement.”

Aw, thanks Ben, I’m a book-moistener! Who knew?

To be honest I felt proud but a little wistful when I finished this book. I’m not exactly sure why. Maybe like you feel at graduation when you know that it’s time to leave something important behind and move on to the next level of wonders. All the scrappy fighting we did to save our beavers reported in this book will mean so much to the next ten cities who try to save theirs. All the fish biologists and cattle ranchers who were never quite listened to by their co-workers. All the assistant professors who get laughed down when they say they want to teach beaver ecology will finally get eyed with new respect. I think Ben’s book will change things for beavers, which probably means it will change things for me and you too.

I especially like the ‘appearance section’ from the publisher.

See you there!