One of the most psychologically fascinating things about the weighty publication of Ben’s book is that suddenly a whole host of players are suddenly talking about how good beavers are – only they’re acting like THEY thought it up all by themselves.”Beavers? Oh yes, Beavers! We love em!” They seem to be clamoring to be the first to say, without actually crediting the book that made them say so in the first place,
It just can’t be a coincidence.
I guess it’s like when you’re best friend suddenly falls in love with that guy you always thought was a little insipid. You never really gave him credit before, but now that SHE loves him, well you have to admit he’s actually okay-looking and clever in his way.
The Busy, Beneficial Beaver
North America used to be crawling with beavers. Over the first few hundred years of European settlement, beavers were decimated, in part as result of the fur trade and in part because their trademark dams caused inconvenient floods. But in recent decades, beavers have been making a comeback, in some cases aided by deliberate reintroduction efforts. Good thing, too: beaver dams may play an important role in water management, helping to store and even recharge depleted groundwater.
Omit mention of Ben’s book: here.
Beavers are called ecosystem engineers, as their dams can completely alter the water flow of small streams. Beavers build their homes, called lodges, in the slow-moving ponds that result. An area with a high beaver population will be covered with these ponds and slow-moving streams. According to biologist Justin P. Wright and colleagues, these habitat modifications have far-reaching benefits. Fish and waterbirds utilize beaver ponds as well. More importantly, when spread across the landscape, the beaver ponds create entirely new habitats. What might be continuous forest without beavers becomes a patchwork of forests and wetlands with them.
Beavers? We love those beavers! I was just going to write about them all out of my own timing honestly, You know how it is being a scientific publication. There are so gosh darn many things that demand your attention – like pathogens, inventions and ocean currents. I just never got around to writing about them until something jarred my memory. I forget what it was exactly,
Some book that starts with an ‘E’.
The effect persists after the beavers move on. Behind the dams, nutritious sediments accumulate. The typical dam lasts around ten years, but after that, without the beavers around to maintain it, the dam will collapse and the pond will dry up. The areas formerly covered by water become lush meadows, supporting additional species of plants. Beavers can do significant local damage through feeding and chopping trees for building materials, but the overall landscape of forest, wetland, and meadows supports much higher plant biodiversity than without beavers.
This ‘mighty white of you‘ article even mentions flow devices, (although rather oddly because it makes it sound like you can just buy them at Home Depot off the shelves or something.) He hits all the right notes. I guess I really shouldn’t give author James MacDonald a hard time, because at least he’s saying the right things.
But you know I will because that’s just who I am.
