Remember that nice article I posted about a few days ago regarding Beaver reintroduction on the West Coast of Oregon? Well here’s the compliment from the East side courtesy of Suzanne Fouty.
A task that’s flat-out perfect for beavers
Beavers can help restore streamside ecosystems.
By JAYSON JACOBY
The Whitman Ranger District has laid out a big job, and one that’s tailor-made for beavers.
But first the district has to entice these industrious, but relatively finicky, rodents to the work site. In theory, attracting beavers is pretty simple. What you need, mainly, are water and trees. Deciduous trees, in particular — aspen, cottonwoods and willows being among beavers’ favorite species. Leafy trees lure beavers in the way candy calls in kids.
Except beavers not only enjoy munching on trees.
The animals also use trees as the building material for their dams. Beavers — and specifically those dams — can confer considerable benefits on streams and the surrounding land, said Fouty, who is the hydrologist for the Whitman Ranger District and developed the beaver project.
Streams with a stable network of beaver dams and ponds tend to flow more reliably, being less susceptible to the boom-bust cycle of spring flood and summer drought that’s common in beaver-deficient creeks in Eastern Oregon.
Ahh sweet music to my ears! Lets start this new solar year with a tale of light and hope. And lets make sure that the year has LOTS of other tails, if you know what I mean.
Other laudable effects, Fouty said, could include:
• Lowering water temperatures, a boon for trout and other fish • Raising the water table • Widening the zone of lush streamside vegetation that’s valuable habitat for wildlife as well as domestic livestock “Beavers are a tool, and one with huge potential to improve stream conditions,” Fouty said. “Basically you let the beavers do the work.”
And beavers, unlike engineers and construction crews, don’t draw a salary.
Now why aren’t more news stories like this? I was so happy to read this article it reminded me to ask Suzanne for an interview for Agents of Change, which she graciously accepted and we are currently arranging. I have never met her, but have been reading her name for upwards of three years, and she is usually involved in whatever good beaver work is ongoing at the moment. By all accounts she is a lovely person as well as being a fiercely good natured beaver advocate, so I’m very excited!
As for the third tactic, the Forest Service in 2009 planted 5,200 willows along a 1.7-mile reach of Camp Creek, and in 2010, Whitman students planted several hundred willows along Gimlet Creek. More planting is planned for 2012. Besides serving as a source of food and dam-building material for beavers, the willows shade the streams, lowering the temperature, and their roots stabilize the banks.
Fouty acknowledges that a burgeoning beaver population can lead to problems as well as benefits. Beaver dams can plug culverts, leading to road washouts, they can damage irrigation ditches, and the rising water table can inundate streamside campsites. But she points out that there are proven techniques for dealing with such problems — a device known as a “beaver deceiver,” for instance, can control the level of a pond and prevent localized flooding, or discourage the animals by continually draining the pond behind a dam.
Ultimately, Fouty said, the presence of beavers has the potential to help farmers and ranchers who depend on streams for irrigation. Unlike manmade structures, beaver dams constantly leak, so even a stream with several dams will always flow. Moreover, by temporarily storing water, and thus raising the water table, a stream with plentiful beaver dams tends to maintain a higher flow in summer and early fall than an undammed stream.
Ahh. It occurs to me that when the rare (but increasingly less rare) good beaver articles appear, I quote them more and tend to write less. Hmmm. Go read the whole thing, and there’s something to look forward to! A day when you hardly have to read me on this website at all and my role is reduced to just pointing you to examples of beaver gospel from around the world!
