A couple of weeks ago Emily Fairfax posted some photos on FB showing her trip to Colorado and saying she had shown a reporter from NPR around the sight of the largest fire which happened to have some amazing beaver habitat that survived. You’ll remember I shared her google map of the visit which is very cool and if you haven’t seen it you still should.
Well that story dropped this morning on the local KUNC station and its definitely worth a listen. After which I am sure you will join me in a hearty chorus of “Go Emily!” as we raise our glasses and click our coffee mugs together.
Enjoy!
Even Colorado’s Largest Wildfire Was No Match For Beavers
Deep in the Cameron Peak burn scar, nestled among charred hills, there’s an oasis of green — an idyllic patch of trickling streams that wind through a lush grass field. Apart from a few scorched branches on the periphery, it’s hard to tell that this particular spot was in the middle of Colorado’s largest-ever wildfire just a year ago.
his wetland was spared thanks to the work of beavers.
The mammals, quite famously, dam up streams to make ponds and a sprawling network of channels. Beavers are clumsy on land, but talented swimmers; so the web of pools and canals lets them find safety anywhere within the meadow.
On a recent visit to that patch of preserved land in Poudre Canyon, ecohydrologist Emily Fairfax emphasized the size of the beavers’ canal network.
“Oh my gosh, I can’t even count them,” she said. “It’s a lot. There’s at least 10 ponds up here that are large enough to see in satellite images. And then between all those ponds is just an absolute spiderweb of canals, many of which are too small for me to see until I’m here on the ground.”
Do see the charred brush there? The fire burned right to the waters edge. Everything went in flames. Except what the beaver had made and flooded and maintained. Maybe their lodge even burned. But no matter, they dumped the seared logs and made it anew.
Fairfax researches how beavers re-shape the landscapes where they live. Across the West, she’s seen beaver-created wetlands survive wildfires.
“When you’re at this beaver complex,” she said, “it never stops being green. Everything else in the landscape – the hill slopes on either side, they both charred. They lost all their vegetation during this fire. But this spot, it did not. These plants were here last year and they’re still here today.”
Fairfax stands in the middle of a vibrant meadow, with golden-green grass up to her knees. She points to a row of trees about 100 feet away, where the trunks have clearly been singed, but brown needles still cling to branches – a sign of “moderately intense” burning. Just another 100 feet past that, another row of trees has been scorched completely black and free of needles – a telltale indicator of “high intensity” burning.
Isn’t it amazing to think that Emily was inspired to change direction in her own life and leave engineering to go study beavers after she watched Jari Osbourne’s awesome documentary? Who knows who is right now getting inspired by Emily’s work and going to make the next transformation?
“The beaver complex and the beaver wetland is so much more than the dam,” Fairfax said. “It’s the channels, it’s the digging, it’s the chewing, it’s the constantly changing the landscape, the dynamics, the flexibility.”
Beavers have millions of years of practice repairing dams and shaping rivers, and that makes them capable water managers.
Fairfax did see a beaver complex serve as a fire break one time in Colorado, but she said it’ll take far more research before we can figure out how effective they are when it comes to slowing down wildfires on a large scale. But for now, these areas are surviving as oases of green in big fires all across the West.
I will say Joe Wheaton sounds like a little bit of a killjoy in the quote alex chose to use from him. Lots of little bits of water add up. And he knows that better than anyone.
