This so rarely happens. There are two very compelling beaver articles that I want to write about this morning. Both have language that makes me want to talk about them and both are by friends whom we know and love. Both have really good qualities worth sharing and both have questionable things worth setting aside. What shall I ever do? I will do an “eenie meenie” and just do both starting with whichever.
:Let’s start with Adam’s article which I would paraphrase as “They’re not doing it for you.”
The Free Agent Beaver
Beavers are having a moment. After being hunted to near extinction, they’ve steadily made a comeback, and today both the scientific community and the public have become increasingly aware and appreciative of their profound influence on habitat.
But as environmentalists, journalists and others praise beavers and expound upon their many planet-saving virtues, a problem has emerged: Beavers are too often seen as a tool for humans, rather than animals with their own agency and agenda.
Even those of us who are closely involved with beavers through conservation organizations or habitat restoration have long defaulted to an innate personification of beavers, unfailingly objectifying them and the “ecosystem services they provide.” How many times have you read or said that beaver activities restore watershed health, provide wildfire breaks and refuges, regulate stream flows, and stabilize the water table?
Okay now part of that echoes the thoughts in my head when people act like relocated beavers can just be simply stapled into the stream to fix some problem or other and that’s that. And part of me just laughed aloud at the sentence “OBJECTIFYING THEM and the ecosystem services they provide.” I see in my mind a voluptuous beaver laying across a dam saying in a languid and accusative voice “You’re objectifying me!”
Seeing beavers as “whole persons” and not just the services you can apply is probably the very last battle I will ever wage. After all the other ones are well solved.
Beavers are not beholden to the human-caused issues of our planet, and it’s time to adjust our language to reflect that simple but profound fact.
A simple substitution of vernacular, conceptualization and attitudes toward beavers and their natural behavior is vital to creating a well-rounded understanding of the natural processes of wildlife. Endless messages — perpetuated by well-meaning journalists and others — of giving beavers a “role” or “putting beavers to work” can be explained more accurately by “attracting them to locations where they might be naturally successful.” Rather than creating a “collaboration” or “partnership” with beavers, we are simply attempting to “support beaver success” and “restore conditions needed for ecological success.”
I am truly not sure how I feel about that sentence. A partnership kind of pressures someone to accept things from their partner that they wouldn’t naturally choose. like a little more water in the pasture or a little chewed tree on the lane. I think its a good thing to hold people accountable to the concept that they can’t have water storage without accommodation and flexibility on their part. Maybe even a little sacrifice.
When we stop seeing and talking about beavers as tools and partners, and instead treat them as free agents with their own agenda completely unrelated to humans, we can collectively transition to the next phase in our conservation effort. We can reach a point where nature is not hierarchically divided in a Linnaean system but recognized as a dynamic organism in concert with itself.
Maybe. In truth every beaver conference I’ve ever attended has me irritated by the second day with people just talking about beaver “As a means to an end” instead of an end in their own right. And maybe that’s the feeling that drives this article.
But the realist in me answers back that people have to have selfish reasons to appreciate beaver because when they don’t beavers die. It’s just that simple.
Objectify if you wish. Just don’t trap.
Now onto this from the Global Policy Institute of California. Which is perfect timing.
Beavers: The Unlikely Climate Hero
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) recently allocated money to support beaver restoration throughout the state, calling the beaver an “untapped, creative climate solving hero.” California native Joe Wheaton is a professor of riverscapes at Utah State University who leads teams working on beaver restoration. We asked him to tell us more about this unlikely climate hero and its role in restoring streams and meadows.
Why beavers? How do beavers to a better job than traditional approaches to restoration?
After decades of studying rivers and the ecosystems that depend on them, we’ve learned that dynamic systems—systems that are regularly adjusting and shifting—perform better. Beavers are experts at creating and maintaining these ecosystems: They have at least 30,000–40,000 more years of engineering experience on this planet than we do.
Okay. So far so good. I am very happy with a California policy article interviewing Joe Wheaton about why beavers are good news for the state. Beavers are in good hands. What could possibly go wrong?
Funny you should ask.
Beavers and people don’t always get along. What do we do about that?
The beaver is a versatile rodent that can occupy many habitats, which is why they sometimes cause problems for humans. We find them in saltwater systems, in Superfund sites, in pristine systems—all over the place. We find them in irrigation ditches, messing with diversions and sometimes flooding infrastructure.
Our team has worked with different municipalities and cities to come up with adaptive beaver management plans. We identify where it may be desirable to encourage beavers and where they may harm infrastructure. In those places, we focus on simple mitigation measures (e.g. pond levelers,
beaver scarecrows tree harvest deterrents) first, and, if necessary, live trapping and relocation. Live trapping is a last resort, however—it’s much easier to deter beavers than to relocate them. However, if we relocate a family of beavers to a beaver dam analogue, they can become a much-needed restoration agent in their new home.
Beaver SCARECROWS??? Is this a nightmare? Dr Joe Wheaton who is possibly the smartest beaver mind in the known universe is invited to talk policy to the authors of CALIFORNIA POLICY and he recommends beaver SCARECROWS????
Ohh I know right away what he is referring too and it’s the BANE of my professional beaver life. I’m guessing it’s that stupid blowy sheet article by Elijah Portugal saying that beavers can be discouraged by a billowy sheet from working at a dam where they are not wanted. Supposedly the method was recommended by a trapper.
Allow me to say, in my most delicate cultivated voice, THIS IS BUNK.
Dear Joe. I understand you want to give people the feeling like they can stop beavers without killing them. I do also. And a blowy sheet could frighten beavers once or twice, But beavers HABITUATE to stimuli just like people do. It might scare them for a minute but it won’t work over time. Our beavers habituated to trains. Garbage trucks. Street Cleaners. Crowds.
If a beaver can adapt to the noise of a 100 car rail train rumbling over their dam I do not think that they are going to be thwarted by a blowy sheet.
Call it a hunch.
Even crows get habituated to scarecrows. The only kind of scarecrow that will work with beavers is possibly this one and it it will only work in Voyageurs Park and a few other places where they have learned what a wolf is.
Without support from agriculture and ranching, restoration efforts could backfire. In the UK, beavers are now a protected species, which—much like an endangered species listing in the US—takes decisions out of local control. That’s a huge problem. It set back relationships with private landowners by decades by pushing too quickly on protection. There’s a delicate balance to strike here—we need to be more pragmatic and careful.
Joe is telling us not to save beavers with sticks. Don’t punish ranchers for trapping beavers. Okay. But why not save them with carrots. Let’s pay ranchers for having dams on their property. Let’s reward them for all the gallons of water they are saving for state.
