I so very rarely am surprised by beaver news, One consequence of reporting on how people react to beavers for more than a decade is that I have usually seen the very best AND the very worst in graphic detail sometime before. But this news completely GOBSMACKED me, I never use that word but there is no other that applies. The most surprising beaver news from the most unlikely of places.

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Did you watch the video? GO WATCH THE VIDEO. I know you’re busy and have children to drop off but just trust me and WATCH.

Leave It to Beavers

As urban regions in the Southeast continue to grow and develop, harmful pollutants enter nearby waterways more frequently. UNC researchers think one of the best solutions to prevent this may be investments in the habitats of the furry neighbors already in our backyards: beavers.

Jumping Jehovas batman. I better sit down and read some more.

Urban flooding has become an increasingly pressing issue as cities grow and replace soil, grass, and plants with concrete, causing city planners to turn to manmade solutions. But the most efficient civil engineers may not be human. The American beaver (Castor canadensis) has become known as a nuisance for its tendency to alter landscapes in neighborhoods through damming, but their knack for flood attenuation may be just what urban planners need.

Farquhar is one of three undergraduate researchers currently working on UNC geographer Diego Riveros-Iregui’s collaborative project with UNC Charlotte, Georgia State University, and Georgia Gwinnett College to determine beavers’ impact on water quality in urban settings and compare them with manmade retention ponds.

Oh my goodness. Oh my ears and whiskers. Research on the benefits of urban beavers in GEORGIA? In North Carolina? Be still my heart.

Retention ponds are expensive to build and maintain and can contain less diverse natural life than beaver marshes, according to Riveros-Iregui. Plants, animals, bacteria, and phytoplankton play a crucial role in the absorption of nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus that may otherwise spill into nearby waterways and cause issues such as harmful algal blooms, destruction of habitat, and overall disruption to ecosystems. Beavers, on the other hand, are already making dams that slow water down long enough to be absorbed by the abundance of life in their marshes.

More fainting. I need more fainting.

By taking measurements of water quality, depth, and flow at inlets and outlets of both beaver marshes and retention ponds, the team can compare what nutrients and chemicals go into and come out of both systems and determine which is more efficient.

“The question really comes to management,” Riveros-Iregui says. “Can we figure out how to manage beaver dams in a way that they can be sustainable? That would be a win-win: We don’t have to remove them, and they’re keeping our streams healthy.”

OF COURSE YOU CAN. If you can’t you are very very silly. We did it in Martinez for longer than Obama was president. They are doing it in Napa and Fairfield and St. Helena right now.

Farquhar is excited to lay the groundwork for research with so much potential for real-life impact.

“I hope our work helps show that beavers are not just a nuisance,” she says. “In the future, if developers want to bulldoze over this marsh, we can show them what it’s doing for the area and that it’s actually beneficial.”

Oh my god. I never ever ever thought this day would come. Or I was certain it would come years ago. I no longer know which. I’m just suddenly very very happy. Urban beaver research in states that kill beavers so often they have their own organization to do it. It very rarely gets better than this.