There’s crazy political news every where, but good beaver news just keeps creeping in. Starting with this very practical film from our friends at the Scottish Wild beavers I pulled off facebook. When you consider that the majority of depredation permits are issued for damage to trees, this video becomes pretty dam important. I would love to see millions more. Maybe one where the people keep changing, teenagers, kids, grandmas to show how this is EASY. And then maybe the wildlife beavers benefit keeps changing to show that it’s worth doing.

The funny thing is that last night I dreamed that I had a meeting with Dave Scola the head of public works, who was unhappy that beavers were eating trees at the marina. In the dream I was simultaneously filled with dread and brainstorming solutions, while trying to decide whether to call him on obvious lies and how best to organize tree wrapping soon with volunteers. All of those things at once, because that’s what life was like 11 years ago. I woke up so very happy I don’t have to deal with that kind of pressure anymore, although I would be would be willing to face it indefinitely if ithat meant I could see beavers.

*A beaver at Schwabacher Landing in Grand Teton National Park. Photograph by Charlie Hamilton James, Nat Geo Image Collection*

This makes twice in one year beavers have been the subject of a National Geographic article, but this one is mostly about the value of the swamps they create.

These swamp creatures serve a purpose… and need our help

The phrase “drain the swamp” goes back many decades in reference to changing bureaucracy—and it implies that swamps are stagnant, undesirable places.

In reality, swamps are wildly productive. The swamps in the Middle East’s were a boon to agriculture and human society, and the area is considered the birthplace of civilization.

Only five percent of the continental U.S. consists of wetlands, “yet they are home to nearly one-third of all of our plant species,” and to over a third of rare and endangered plant and animal species, says Mike Hardig, a biologist at the University of Montevallo in Alabama, via email.

“Swamp microbes improve water quality,” says conservation ecologist Christine Angelini of the University of Florida via email. They do this by removing excess nitrogen from the water, she says.

Also, many larger filter-feeding invertebrates such as mussels live on the bottom of swamps, “cleaning the water of suspended organic remains,” Hardig says.

That’s a pretty nice introduction to swamp 101. Of course my favorite part comes next.

Alabama’s Ebenezer Swamp is dependent on beavers, “whose dams create backwater areas where many other organisms can live,” says Hardig, who heads the Ebenezer Swamp Wetlands Research and Interpretive Program.

By damming up rivers, beavers create ponds. That creates “an open water component,” which is especially important in places like Texas that have experienced recent extreme droughts, White says.

These ponds “become the watering hole for local wildlife.”

Insects that require water to lay their eggs in, such as dragonflies and the mosquitos they eat, provide food for birds, fish, amphibians, bats, and other bugs.

And far from being ugly or foreboding, wetlands “provide an abundance of natural beauty that is capable of soothing the ragged psyche of typical modernite,” Hardig says.

No one ever said anything so nice about politics. We’re voting for the swamps.

Well in Martinez beavers were politics, so you talked about them both at the same time. Ahh memories.

Finally today there’s a snippet of beaver news from Missouri of all places. This report on KBIA. from the Department of Conservation’s Discover Nature series. The brief report ran with that nice illustration which I thought you would appreciate. Considering where it’s from this is pretty deft beaver praise.