International Beaver Day was first celebrated in 2009, after being created by a nonprofit group called Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife. The group chose April 7 as the date because it is the birthday of Dorothy Richards (1894-1985), a woman who had studied beavers for almost 50 years at the Beaversprite Sanctuary in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. She had been an inspiration for Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife, and the group’s first work was to finish reforming management of the 1,300-acre Beaversprite Sanctuary. They also have worked to stop anti-beaver legislation from being passed in several states, and have worked to find solutions to human and beaver conflicts. Eventually, they became an internationally recognized authority on beavers. In the first year of International Beaver Day, they donated almost 1,000 copies of the teachers’ edition of their DVD Coexisting with Beavers to schools.
There’s more about our day from the site above but you might have seen some of it already. What’s happening now really shows that past efforts to get the word out about how valuable we are is paying off!
A river–forest ecosystem in Northern California, USA within the historic range of American beaver. Including ecosystem engineers in restoration and management decisions may lead to better outcomes for ecosystem functioning. Credit: Understory
In ecosystems, all species interact with each other and their environment. However, some species have a much greater influence than others. Certain plants or animals are able to greatly modify their landscape through just their mere presence. This makes them part of the group know as “ecosystem engineers.”
One of the best known examples of an ecosystem engineer is the beaver. By building dams, beavers change the flow of rivers and transform terrestrial ecosystems into wetlands. This leads to a whole cascade of processes and the arrival of new animals.
Although the individual cases of ecosystem engineers helping biodiversity are well documented, the mechanisms at work are not yet well understood. Scientists from UNIL have developed a guide for predicting and measuring the influence of species on ecosystems under different conditions. The aim of the guide is to include “ecosystem engineers” in the process of biodiversity conservation and ecosystem maintenance. The team’s review is published in Functional Ecology.
To establish this framework, the scientists proceeded in several stages. First, knowledge and literature about the known ecosystem engineers was collected. Next, the team developed a comprehensive framework to model and quantify the effects of the species. Finally, a procedure for including these natural regulators as much as possible in the field was created.
Gianalberto Losapio is the lead author of the study and a researcher at the faculty of Geosciences and Environment at UNIL. He is also affiliated with the University of Milan. He said, “This guide is intended to help specialists and communities ask themselves the right questions when setting up conservation programs. For example: What is the goal? What are the characteristics of the terrain, as well as the spatial context?”
The guide also provides tools to assess the impact of the actions carried out so that they can be adapted if necessary. “Some restoration projects end up being abandoned because introduced species cannot survive,” adds Losapio. “We believe a comprehensive approach is more likely to succeed.”
Burlington, Vt. – Ahead of International Beaver Day (April 7), PETA sent a letter this morning to Champlain College President Alex Hernandez, appealing to him to slap a fur ban on campus so as to protect beavers just like the school’s own beloved mascot, Chauncey.
PETA points out that tens of thousands of beavers are killed every year and that, as Champlain College itself points out, they were once on the verge of extinction in North America due to hunting for their pelts. With a ban, the school could help protect beavers and other animals still trapped and killed for their fur, joining Kingston University in London and the many cities that are also implementing or considering fur bans, and further the college’s mission to advance society and encourage students to help create a better world for all.
“Beavers are caught in steel-jaw traps, which clamp down with bone-breaking force, causing excruciating pain and a slow death,” writes PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “Please help end cruelty to beavers by informing students and staff members about the threats these animals face and by establishing a fur-free campus.”
PETA’s letter to Hernandez follows.
April 5, 2023
Alex Hernandez
President
Champlain College
Dear President Hernandez:
I’m writing on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals—PETA entities have more than 9 million members and supporters globally, including many thousands across Vermont—ahead of International Beaver Day on Friday, April 7, with a dam good request that would help protect beavers like Champlain’s beloved mascot, Chauncey: Will you please ban fur on campus? This step would not only further the college’s mission to advance society and encourage students to help create a better world for all but also help protect beavers and other animals who are trapped and killed for their fur.
As you likely already know, beavers are intelligent and resourceful animals. They’re well gnawn for building dams to create ponds that offer refuge from predators and space for food storage. They also construct lodges that provide shelter and a safe place to raise their young. They’re great swimmers, and their fur is naturally oily and waterproof, which helps them keep dry and warm, even when submerged for a very long time. They’re also among the few animals who can alter their surroundings to produce a suitable home. The dams they make generate wetlands, which are vital ecosystems for many species.
Tens of thousands of beavers are killed every year, often in response to their natural dam-building efforts or so they can be used for their fur. Champlain College even points out that beavers were once nearly extinct in North America due to hunting. To trap beavers, humans often use steel-jaw traps, which clamp together with bone-breaking force, causing excruciating pain. Beavers are also often strangled in neck snares and crushed in body-gripping traps, which are barbaric devices with metal bars designed to slam shut on an animal’s body. Some traps are designed to hold beavers underwater until they drown. But since they’re used to holding their breath while they dive for long periods, death by drowning is a slow, agonizing process for them.
Please help end cruelty to beavers by informing students and staff members about the threats these animals face and by establishing a fur-free campus. Many U.S. cities have already implemented bans on fur sales, and various institutions of higher learning are considering fur bans. Your efforts to help animals would beavery impactful. Thank you for your consideration. We look forward to hearing that Champlain will be a leader on this important issue.
Very truly yours,
Ingrid Newkirk
President
We are intelligent and resourceful and do do well at gnawing trees to sustain us and make our dams, but I’m not sure if the mention above of “being well gnawn” is a punny insert or auto-correct glitch. It sorta fits though. . .
A beaver dam on Lake Lowell in Caldwell, ID | Mackenzie Davidson | Argonaut
The U.S. government is looking to an unlikely rodent in an effort to repair ravaged riparian ecosystems, and it might be working.
Beavers are one of the odder species, in terms of appearance. With their long buckteeth, paddle tail and rounded shape, they don’t often attract sympathy from the owners of the land they choose to settle down on.
Due to unregulated trapping in the 1800s, beavers were largely eradicated from the U.S. This had cascading effects on the ecosystems they once called home. Beavers, as “ecosystem engineers,” change their environment in ways that promote a healthy ecosystem. With beavers gone, the riparian, or water based, ecosystems they frequented were in trouble.
Many other animals rely on the work beavers do to remain healthy. Without beavers, fish populations, predators, birds, amphibians and even the plants lining water banks were suffering.
Since 2008 the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest has been reintroducing beavers to various areas in order to promote riparian health. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the project has documented an increase in salmonid spawning and rearing as a result of the beavers’ presence.
In Idaho there are between 50 and 75 beaver restoration projects currently operational. These projects either directly introduce beavers to damaged riparian areas or have biologists build dam-like structures in order to encourage beaver populations to return to those areas.
The U.S. has a history of killing off vital species, directly resulting in whole ecosystems decaying; a cursory examination of the history at Yellowstone National Park can attest to that. The eradication of wolves, grizzly bears, mountain lions and, of course, beavers have all resulted in the lack of riparian vegetation, predatory species and healthy landscapes.
It brings hope to the environmental community seeing these restoration projects underway, reversing the damage once done to the American landscape. Recent legislation, like Idaho’s SB 1211 and Utah’s HB 469, attempt to undo some of those efforts, but biologists and conservationists are not so easily deterred.
The beaver represents a great success in conservation; once nearly extinct, there are now almost 15 million in North America alone thanks to supremely dedicated conservationists.
Mackenzie Davidson can be reached at arg-opinion@uidaho.edu or on Twitter @mackenzie_films
But coexistence is key. We just want to get along without hurting anyone. So maybe you can help out these friendly folks.
Humans often kill beavers when their damming and tree-chewing behaviors cause problems such as flooding and destroyed vegetation. This approach is ineffective because new beavers will soon move into the empty habitat. Lethal trapping, dam destruction, and culvert unclogging are only temporary solutions that, in the long-run, are expensive and unsustainable.
How is coexistence possible?
Beavers and the wetland habitats they create are beneficial to people, plants, animals, and entire landscapes and watersheds. We believe it is possible for people to share land with live beavers while addressing flooding and tree-chewing problems using long-term, cost-effective solutions.
Got some images of kids playing beaver at the recent SLO County Beaver Festival.
Beavers from Space launched April 4th on the Zooniverse. The citizens science project uses satellite imagery to uncover beaver habitat in Canada. Read on below to learn more about how you can help out.
Become a dam detective by searching satellite imagery for signs of beavers on the landscape!
Despite the cultural and ecological importance of ksisskstaki (beaver) little is known about their presence in Alberta’s streams and rivers. By searching through satellite imagery for beaver dams and lodges in the waterways of the Kainai Nation (Blood Tribe) in southern Alberta, Beavers from Space seeks to determine where beavers are present on the landscape and where they are not. Volunteers will search through imagery of over 7,000 kilometres (4,300 miles) of streams within the study area, a task that would be overwhelming and expensive to undertake with field work alone. This information, in combination with field work data, will inform riparian (river ecosystem) restoration locations, which may include the installation of beaver dam analogues. Beaver dam analogues are a proven riparian restoration technique that improves watershed health and function by mimicking the work of beavers.
Our study area is focused on the 3 watersheds (outlined in black below) that the Kainai Nation (Blood Tribe) reservation and timber limit are located in (outlined in red below). Generally, this area stretches west from Lethbridge, Alberta, to the British Columbia border, and includes Waterton Lakes National Park. The study area is just north of the Canadian-American border in the State of Montana.
By reviewing satellite imagery for beaver dams, you can help us understand where beavers are present in our watershed or where beaver-mediated restoration could occur where beavers are absent. We anticipate a relatively low density of beavers on this landscape, which is why we need your help to search every stream in the study area.
Dam neat project if you ask me! Click this link for a lot more information.
There was a bit of news from The First Annual SLO County Beaver Festival. It went well with around a thousand attendees over the day. A good time was had by all and especially the kids who got to build dams out of mud and sticks! There is also a fun video of Cooper Lienhart joining The Loving Mosh to sing Go Little Beaver Go at the Festival on April 1st, 2023.
Oh! One more thing. The Cambridge Filmworks people got rid of the darn nutria photo that I told them about! They found an image of a handsome European cousin to head the article like I hoped they would. Yeah!
A Eurasian beaver family will be getting new neighbours to help protect an additional stretch of Finchingfield Brook. The Essex project is to build two, new, 50-acre enclosures in preparation for more beaver families. The new arrivals will extend the amazing work of their cousins, introduced to the Estate in 2019, who have already transformed a woodland into a thriving wetland. The unprecedented £350,000 scale-up is jointly supported by Anglian Water, the Environment Agency, the Anglian Eastern Regional Flood and Coastal Committee (RFCC), Essex County Council and Essex and Suffolk Water in an innovative partnership funding approach.
The two new enclosures, along the Finchingfield Brook, will measure 1.9km long cover 40 hectares (100 acres), 10 times the size of the original enclosure, which was built in 2019. Preparations for the project are already underway with two new beaver families expected to be re-introduced in Spring 2023.
Archie Ruggles-Brise, Spains Hall Estate manager said:
“The chance to bring more natural engineering skills to the estate is beyond exciting. Since 2019 we’ve seen what beavers can do to reduce flood risk, increase drought resilience, clean water and create year-round habitat for wildlife. Now, thanks to the incredible support of our partners, we can supersize these benefits.
“With a massive new area to work in the beavers will help make the Finchingfield area more able to weather the changes climate change will bring, and all the while providing inspiration and experience that others can use elsewhere. For the estate this means we can keep pushing the boundaries of what can be done on private land, if you are willing to be open about working with others and offer a compelling vision.”
Acting as nature’s engineers, the beavers have helped to completely transform the landscape around them. The dams have played a crucial role in reducing flood risk in the area by slowing down the river flow and channelling it through new channels and wetlands.
Throughout this year’s drought, the dams also helped the river flows by slowly releasing retained water, helping to protect local wildlife. We hope these new beavers settle in and breed as successfully as the original pair, who produced three sets of kits.”
Environment Agency lead on the project Matt Butcher said:
“It’s great to see this project go from strength to strength providing real benefits to the local environment and community.
“The beavers have shown what effective flood engineers they are in the past few years and it’ll be great to extend this to a wider area.”
Dr Robin Price, Director of Quality and Environment for Anglian Water said:
“The effects of climate change including the risk of drought and flooding are felt more keenly in the East of England more than anywhere else in the UK. We need to find new and better ways of dealing with the challenges they bring while continuing to protect homes and businesses– and what better way to approach the problem of flooding here in Finchingfield than this wonderful, nature-based solution.
“Restoring natural habitat in such a purposeful way is also at the heart of Anglian Water’s Get River Positive commitment and we are proud to be supporting the next stage of Archie’s vision for Spains Hall Estate.”
Cllr Peter Schwier, Climate Czar at Essex County Council said:
“Essex County Council has been involved in the Essex Beaver project from the very beginning, providing administrative assistance and advice on water courses, so we are very pleased this project is proving so successful.
“Our work with all partners involved in this project means we are improving space and habitat for wildlife, while at the same time the work of the beavers is mitigating flooding, two of the key priorities contained in the Everyone’s Essex Green Infrastructure Strategy.
“Beavers are productive and useful and an honour to have in the beautiful Essex countryside.”
Richard Powell, Chair of the Regional Flood and Coastal Committee said:
“We are once again delighted to be part of the estate’s work, using flood risk funding to deliver nature based solutions is in all our interests. This project will deliver so much more than reduced flooding, creating invaluable wetland habitat as an oasis in the East Anglian landscape.”
Tom Harris, Catchment Advisor at Essex & Suffolk Water said:
“We’re delighted to be able to support the next phase of this exciting project, expanding significantly on the good work that the beavers have already carried out, turning their areas of the Estate into wild wetlands – providing huge benefits for biodiversity as well as slowing the flow in the catchment.
“Having the Spain’s Hall estate situated in one of our key raw water catchments has given us a fantastic opportunity to develop our ongoing work with catchment landowners, bringing multiple benefits for water quality, the local environment and their businesses. We are truly looking forward to the continuation of our partnership with the fantastic team at Spains Hall.”
To find out more about this fantastic project, please visit: Anglian Water
Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. (Well, slightly exaggerated anyway.) 20 days ago I fell while doing something very unimpressive and broke both the bones in my calf and some in my ankle. I wish I could tell you I was doing something brave or exotic at the time, like rescuing a kitten from a flash flood event, but alas no. I was just getting ready to sit down at my desk and, big surprise, write about beavers. But fate had other plans for me.
With all the breaking I was referred for surgery but not right away because everything needed to stop swelling, so I was in brace for two weeks and then went for some bionic surgery where many pieces of hardware were used to put Humpty Dumpty together again. Two weeks later I had healed enough to be fit with a cast which allowed partial weight bearing. And that was Wednesday. No walking until May 1st.
Jon and Bodie
So I am currently practicing standing and pivoting and transferring From bed to chair. It is harder work than it should be and all the stormy weather means my skilled nursing facility has lost power three nights. Jon and Bodie have both come to visit and I have my iPad to stay up on beaver news of course.
Thank goodness Rusty and Bob have stepped in and so valiantly filled in for me. There is so much going on we need to know about. Thanks guys, thanks patient reader(s), and god willing I’ll be back in my own home in a week or so and see you all at the beaver festival.
For a bit of Martinez Beaver Festival nostalgia I offer this clip from when my wife Jane and I visited in 2015.
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.
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.”
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.”
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.
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.”
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.
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.
Yay!!! April 7th is INTERNATIONAL BEAVER DAY!
