Feeling nostalgic? Time again for that age-old question, this time delivered by the big guns at the National Resources Defense Council. Same tune but different baritone. We’re ready for this. The planet is ready for this.
The Humble Beaver: Troublemaker or Climate Superhero?
Beavers create rich habitats and act as buffers against the effects of drought and wildfire—spurring efforts to pinpoint new ways to help us coexist with North America’s largest rodent.
At one point along the road that runs parallel to Lost Creek is a culvert that drains runoff from the mountainous terrain. There, beavers felled nearby aspen and other trees and set about constructing a dam in front of the culvert. With the pipe blocked, the water level behind the dam rose. “They have made these really beautiful ponds on one side of the road,” says beaver expert Elissa Chott. The deep water ensures the entrance tunnels leading to the beaver lodge—built of sticks, mud, and rocks—remain beneath the surface, providing protection from predators. And the large expanse of water offers easy access to the fresh leaves, stems, and bark that the vegetarians consume.
But what the beavers considered as the perfect place to build a home, the land managers at Lost Creek considered a nuisance. The rodents so effectively blocked the culvert that their ponds flooded the road. So the officials called Chott, who heads up the Beaver Conflict Resolution pilot project. A joint partnership formed last year between the Montana-based Clark Fork Coalition, National Wildlife Federation, and Defenders of Wildlife, the project aims to help public and private landowners find nonlethal solutions for dealing with problematic beaver.
There are ample reasons for people and North America’s largest rodent to learn to better coexist as these mammals rebound across the West. Beavers manipulate the landscape for their own purposes, but mounting evidence shows that the marshy expanses they create may act as a buffer against drought and wildfire, both of which climate change is exacerbating. Myriad other species benefit from the efforts of the industrious rodents too. Algae and aquatic plants thrive in their ponds and provide nourishment for fish, birds, and mammals. One study found 50 percent more species in beaver-built ponds than in other wetlands in the same area. When the beavers eventually exhaust their woody food supply, they move to a new location—but even then, the ecosystems they’ve engineered continue to give back. Their abandoned dams and ponds leak and drain, in turn giving rise to lush, grassy meadows that draw nesting songbirds and other animals.
Got that? AMPLE REASONS. Hurray for the beaver conflict resolution project. I wish ever state had a beaver task force! And here comes Emily.
Some of those benefits are still being revealed. Emily Fairfax, an ecohydrologist at California State University Channel Islands, has found that the clever creatures are creating wetlands uniquely resistant to drought and wildland fire. She has mapped an estimated 5,000 dams in California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming using satellite imagery. Using remote sensing, she compared how a drought or a fire affects the quality of the vegetation in areas with dams versus similar stretches without them. “It’s very clear that beavers keep things green,” she said. In contrast, in the undammed riparian zones she studied, the drought-ravaged landscapes had far less vegetation.
Fairfax is working to find ways to get higher-resolution imagery so she can tease apart what may make beaver-shaped landscapes better able to withstand the effects of climate change. Ultimately, she’d like to devise a tool for land managers to use when considering their resident rodents—an empirical model, perhaps, that would allow them to determine the number of beavers or dams needed to see an appreciable fire- or drought-buffering effect. After all, she notes, many land managers who encounter beavers are already searching for ways to help recharge groundwater and nurture native vegetation. But “because beavers were absent for so long, they don’t understand how the beavers fit into that [work].” As a result, they continue to resort to trapping or removing beavers, she says.
But “what if we could provide a number?” Fairfax asks. “If you could say that having X number of beavers is going to preserve 900 acres of wetlands during fire, and that should hold true for 70 percent of likely fires,” would that change attitudes toward beavers?
Oooh I know how many! As many as they dam well want! Beavers have a knack for this sort of thing. They know how many will fit in an area. Trust them.
Today, thankfully, conservationists no longer need to resort to such extreme measures as dropping beavers from the sky to help their populations recover. Instead, they’re watching the paddle-tailed architects slowly move back into the streams where their ancestors lived, carrying on the compulsion to stop the drip drip drip of gentle water flows, and leaving healthier, more resilient habitats in their wake.
Oooh that may be my favorite line in this whole article. Emily’s research is making peoples heads hurt. They want a buffer for fires so badly, but god dam does it HAVE to be beavers? Honestly? Anything but beavers. They haaaaaaaaaaaaaate beavers. I’ve always said it was like telling men you could cure impotence with feminism. Does ut gave to be beavers?
Yes. Yes it does.
