It’s been so quiet on the beaver front. Days have passed since the last review of Ben Goldfarb’s book. I know he’s headed to Toronto for the NACCB conference next week, but I expected we’d hear something on the way.
Looks like the dry spell is over. Good. I like this part.
FERN Q&A:
Beaver-created wetlands could be a farmer’s best friend
Ben Goldfarb is one of the most eloquent and powerful storytellers writing today about environmental issues in America. His two stories for FERN, The Codfather, a rollicking tale of fraud and regulatory breakdown in the New England commercial fishery, and The Endling, about the final days of the vaquita, a shy porpoise that lives only in the Gulf of California, were among the best pieces we’ve published. In his new book, Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, he makes the case that this widely vilified rodent, which was trapped nearly out of existence in the U.S., is not only making a comeback but could play a major role in mitigating the effects of climate change. Brent Cunningham, FERN’s executive editor, interviewed him about the book via email.
Given how thoroughly erased they’ve been from modern America, I would bet that most people’s idea of the beaver is connected to various cartoons. How big an obstacle is this disconnect to the larger effort of not only restoring the beaver but embracing its multifaceted environmental reclamation work?
We’re an increasingly urban nation, often disconnected from the rural areas where our food is produced and our wildlife, beavers included, dwells. To some extent, though, that’s changing. Just as the slow food movement has reconnected Americans with farmers’ markets and urban farms, beavers are gradually reentering our consciousness. They’re hardy critters, after all, capable of thriving in some pretty developed landscapes so long as we don’t actively kill them. Some of my favorite stories in the book are about urban beavers: the colony that moved into a wetland next to a Walmart in Logan, Utah, for instance, or the rodents’ return to the Bronx River — New York City’s first beavers in 200 years! We’re a country with a growing beaver population and, I think, a growing beaver awareness.
And with that awareness, I’d like to imagine, comes an appreciation for how important beavers are to our ecosystems. When beavers built dams and created ponds in a stream in downtown Martinez, California, wildlife from otters to herons quickly rode in on their coattails. Spend a few minutes at a beaver pond, and you can’t fail to appreciate how much life these creatures support.
I love reading what Ben has to say about beavers, but finding little mentions of Martinez is like discovering an unopened Christmas present with your name on it under the tree in January. A little something extra to you didn’t expect. Aww thanks Ben.
Related to both these previous questions, isn’t part of the implication of your book that we — humans — will need to reimagine certain ideas about the “outdoors” if the beaver is to return in a significant way? Like what a great trout stream looks like? Maybe even what a ranch or a farm looks like?
Incorporating beavers in agricultural landscapes is, to my mind, one of the most exciting frontiers in water management. Take James Rogers, the manager of the Winecup-Gamble Ranch in northeast Nevada. For decades, the ranch’s irrigation water was supplied from a reservoir behind a giant human-built dam — the kind of centralized water infrastructure solution that pervades the American West. Last winter, though, the dam washed out and the reservoir drained.
Most ranchers would have ordered it rebuilt, but James is a savvy, progressive guy, and he recognized that the ranch’s sizable beaver population could be part of the answer. Instead of rebuilding a single enormous (and risky) dam, he’s hiring a consulting firm to construct a number of smaller wetlands all over the property that will be populated and maintained by the resident beavers. Rather than putting all his eggs in a single basket, he’s diversifying his approach to water storage — with the help of a rodent. I so admire that humility and vision, that willingness to work with, rather than against, the natural world.
This is a good article that hits a lot of high points Click on the title to go read the whole thing for yourself. Ben sure knows what he’s doing.
If you were speaking to a room of ranchers and farmers, what would say to convince them the stop viewing the beaver as “irrigation-clogging, tree-felling, field-flooding menaces”?
Rather than doing the talking myself (after all, I’m just a lowly journalist), I’d introduce them to someone whose experience they’d respect: say, Jon Griggs, another brilliant Nevada rancher. Griggs is a former beaver skeptic. When the critters turned up in Susie Creek, the stream that runs through his grazing allotment, in 2003, his inclination was to kill them. But he let them live, and was soon happy he did. Beavers, and their dams, turned his stream into a sprawling cattail marsh, creating 20 additional acres of open water, raising water tables two feet, and increasing plant production by more than 30 percent. That wasn’t just good for the ecosystem, it was great for his bottom line. When drought hit in 2012, nearby ranchers had to pay a bunch of money to truck water to their thirsty livestock. But thanks largely to beavers, and the ponds and marshes they’d created, Griggs was able to water his livestock without expensive trucks. He’s become a great spokesman for the power of beavers, and he’s convinced neighboring ranchers to embrace these animals, too. If anyone’s going to change the fate of beavers in America, it’s guys like Jon Griggs — authentic agricultural community members with hard-won experience.
Ahh deft choice, although it literally makes me shudder to read Griggs name without at least a mention of the patient BLM fish biologist Carol Evans who painstakingly nurtured his curiosity before a single beaver even dreamed of moving in. Still, Jon is a convincing voice. Kudos for broadcasting him.
Nitrate runoff from ag operations is a huge problem, contaminating drinking water, killing aquatic life, and creating algal blooms and dead zones. You have a short passage about how wetlands, like those created by beavers, filter out nitrates and other runoff from agricultural operations. How realistic is it, given the current state of affairs in our country, that a beaver-based strategy for dealing with runoff can get a foothold and grow?
Well, I’m a congenital optimist, but I think it’s entirely realistic! We already know that wetlands capture runoff, and that beavers create wetlands; according to one study, beaver ponds are capable of filtering out as much as 45 percent of nitrates in southern New England watersheds. The limiting factor for wetlands restoration in this country is obvious: money. But beavers, of course, conduct wetlands restoration for free (and, even better, without requiring permits). Why not, then, learn to better coexist with a creature who will contribute unpaid labor to our greatest water quality crisis? Once more for the people in the back: Let the rodent do the work!
Ahh!
Do you know the story of Johnny Appleseed? He was a pioneer hero who famously walked all of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Ontario and Illinois bearing apple seeds and a shovel to spread the crisp good news. Never mind that he was more interested in boosting the alcohol production than feeding anyone, he was still regarded as a hero who cheerfully got the ecological message out.
Well I’m formally dubbing Ben “Johnny Beaver-seed” Because he’s traveling the countryside sewing appreciate for this curious flat-tailed crop, and I, for one, couldn’t be happier.
Oh the dam is good to me!
And so I thank the dam!
For giving me, the things I wish
The duck and the frog and the well and the fish
the dam is good to me!
