Kent Woodruff was the visionary USFS leader behind the ground-breaking Methow Project and really the spark for so many beaver movements across the country. His protege is Alexa Whipple who now directs the beaver project hersel. I was looking forward to hearing this talk from BeaverCon2. Make sure you find time for it too.
Tag: Alexa Whipple
I was thinking this morning. You know what our politicians and bureaucrats really need? They need a nice simple explanation of all the good things beavers can do for them in language so simple a child could understand it. Hey we’re in luck! Because Suzanne Fouty just recorded a talk for Families for Climate. I think she does a super job. What do you think? (more…)
Well the beaver coho story is only 30 years old. Don’t you think its time for the Smithsonian to act like they discovered it? Me too.
Scientists Are Relocating Nuisance Beavers to Help Salmon
Alves helped launch the Tulalip Beaver Project in 2014 with the aim of using beavers to boost declining salmon numbers. Since the low-cost project began, scientists have relocated more than 200 “nuisance” beavers, as they are called, and created dozens of salmon-friendly beaver ponds. While scientists don’t have statistics on salmon population changes after beaver reintroductions, they say anecdotal evidence shows the rodents reshape the landscape in a way that’s fostering more fish. Now they’re set to expand their easily scalable work into new watersheds in western Washington, and other groups in the Pacific Northwest are picking up on their successful tactics too. “I’ve heard multiple people say that Washington is kind of a leader in beaver projects,” says Kodi Jo Jaspers, a Trout Unlimited employee and manager of the recently-launched Wenatchee Beaver Project on the other side of the Cascades.
Just so you know. There are no “Nuisance beavers”. Only property-owners that can solve problems. And property owners who can’t.
The reintroductions are important because the outlook for wild salmon is dire, especially in the Pacific Northwest. About a third Tof salmon and steelhead populations on the West Coast have already gone extinct according to a 2007 study in Conservation Biology. Today, 14 more populations out of 131 remaining are at risk of extinction in Washington alone, according to a 2020 report produced by the governor’s salmon recovery office. In the heavily populated Puget Sound area, only one of 22 different populations of chinook salmon—the largest species—has exceeded population goals set by NOAA in 2007.
These declines have led to a flurry of funding for salmon recovery projects. Many of those projects are costly and logistically complex; they include tearing down man-made dams that block fish passages, removing pollutants from contaminated waters and installing new salmon-friendly bridges over spawning grounds. The salmon recovery office estimates that only 22 percent of the funding needed for these projects has been met—after $1 billion has been pumped into salmon recovery efforts.
Moving beavers for fun and profit! That sounds like a book that needs to be written. Everyone loves a good ‘moving beavers’ story. Molly has been in the New York times. The Washington Post. And now the Smithsonian.
I wonder if any of these folks ever think about the problems that COULD be solved by installing a flow device and letting beavers stay put?
Salmon need icy cold, clear water year-round, and that’s exactly what beavers provide. A 2019 study by Benjamin Dittbrenner, the executive director of Beavers Northwest, showed that each beaver relocated by the Tulalip Beaver Project created a swimming-pool sized pond of water for every 328 feet of stream. The beavers also slowed the stream down, causing more water to soak into the ground. The dams cooled downstream water by more than two degrees Celsius because the deeper water was harder for the sun to heat. And the ponds increase the amount of water available throughout the dry summer months by 20 percent because of the small reservoirs created behind the beaver dams. All of these new conditions add up to ideal habitat for salmon fry, as the baby fish are called.
I’ve been dooint this so long I have the graphic all ready for every occasion. Fancy that. This is the paragraph I like the most.
“If you have beavers in conflict with people and they will be killed if they’re not moved, then yeah. We’re gonna move them,” says Alexa Whipple. “But we’re trying to create more programs for coexistence strategies.” Biologists use tools that homeowners might not be aware of to mitigate damage. For example, scientists install pond leveling devices that prevent flooding and wrap the base of trees in beaver-proof fencing.
Now that is worth the price of admission. Hey I wonder when the Smithsonian is going to write an article about the harm people do to salmon when they trap beavers. Any time soon?
Don’t hold your breath.
Despite the success of beaver relocation programs, quantifying the projects’ impacts on salmon is tricky. Limited funding means projects don’t have the resources to count salmon numbers in the streams. Instead, biologists measure easier-to-collect data like water temperature, the number of new ponds and the size of those ponds. “Our metric of success is just whether they have impacted their environment somehow, in some way, by some structure,” says Jaspers, with the assumption that building better habitat equals more salmon.
Even though the biologists don’t have the written numbers to show it, they have witnessed direct benefits to the fish. “We’ve seen sites just completely transform to these massive beaver complexes of like 12, 13 dams and ponds everywhere,” says Alves. “Now there’s hundreds of salmon fry swimming in these ponds.”
Or you know. You could leave the beavers where they are. Solve any issues they cause with about 2 hrs of work. And have salmon populations explode across the pacific coast.
Your call.
The horrible glass fire is threatening our friends at Safari West AGAIN, so if you have any leftover space in your thoughts and prayers please after praying for our constitution. our supreme court and asking to spare members of your family from Covid, please send some metta and loving kindness their way. Fire is very much on our minds in California. Like mercy it droppeth as the gentle rains from heaven. Ash is covering our decks and our gardens and the smell of smoke woke me up.
I’m so glad Rick Lanman updated his wikipedia page.
Beaver ponds as wildlife refugia and firebreaks in wildfires
Beaver and their associated ponds and wetlands may be overlooked as effective wildfire-fighting tools.[145] Eric Collier’s 1959 book, Three Against the Wilderness, provides an early description of a string of beaver ponds serving as a firebreak, saving the home of his pioneer family from a wildfire in interior British Columbia.[146] Reduction of fuel loads by beaver removal of riparian trees, increased moisture content in riparian vegetation by beaver-raised water tables, and water held in beaver ponds all act as barriers to wildfires. In a study of vegetation after five large wildfires in the western United States, riparian corridors within 100 meters of beaver ponds were buffered from wildfires when compared to similar riparian corridors without beaver dams. [147] Professor Joe Wheaton of Utah State University studied the barren landscape left one month after the Sharps Fire burned 65,000 acres (260 km2) in Idaho’s Blaine County in 2018. He found a lone surviving green ribbon of riparian vegetation along Baugh Creek,[148] (see image) illustrating how a string of beaver ponds resists wildfires, creating an “emerald refuge” for wildlife.[145] Lastly, two studies of the Methow River watershed, after the 2014 Carlton Complex Fire burned 256,000 acres (1,040 km2) in north central Washington State, have shown that beaver dams reduced the negative impacts of wildfire on sediment runoff, reduced post-wildfire sediment and nutrient loads, and preserved both plant and macroinvertebrate communities.[149][150]
In addition to citing Emily and Alexis fantastic paper he also came across an outstanding thesis by Edin Stewart entitled: Beavers Buffering Blazes: The Potential Role of Castor canadensis in Mitigating Wildfire Impacts on Stream Ecosystems. I will add the whole paper to our library but suffice it to say it concludes whoppingly with the following sentence: “our study provides support for the hypothesis that beaver dams reduce the negative impacts of wildfire on stream habitats and communities.”
Yup.
Speaking of fire, one of the evacuations I heard on the news yesterday was the Oakmont region of Sonoma. This has been on my mind lately because of the famed Oakmont Symposium which is a dynamic and coveted and widely attended lecture series. I think we met a fellow from the group years ago at the dam watching beavers in Martinez.
So I spent yesterday working on this. Fire notwithstanding, I assume this will happen?
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Robert Frost
Now, you know I don’t drag out the star wars award scene for just ANY achievement. I save it for the best of the best. And this is better than that. Yesterday NPR was busy shouting that beavers create climate change, I got calls from Idaho and Wisconsin and my own mother. But National Geographic was doing this:
PUBLISHED
The American West is ablaze with fires fueled by climate change and a century of misguided fire suppression. In California, wildfire has blackened more than three million acres; in Oregon, a once-in-a-generation crisis has forced half a million people to flee their homes. All the while, one of our most valuable firefighting allies has remained overlooked: The beaver.
A new study concludes that, by building dams, forming ponds, and digging canals, beavers irrigate vast stream corridors and create fireproof refuges in which plants and animals can shelter. In some cases, the rodents’ engineering can even stop fire in its tracks.
“It doesn’t matter if there’s a wildfire right next door,” says study leader Emily Fairfax, an ecohydrologist at California State University Channel Islands. “Beaver-dammed areas are green and happy and healthy-looking.”
BOOM! And just like that not only is Emily’s research reported in National Geographic at the very time we need to hear it the most, the entire article is WRITTEN by our good friend Ben Goldfarb. So you know it’s going to be good.
For decades, scientists have recognized that the North American beaver, Castor canadensis, provides a litany of ecological benefits throughout its range from northern Mexico to Alaska. Beaver ponds and wetlands have been shown to filter out water pollution, support salmon, sequester carbon, and attenuate floods. Researchers have long suspected that these paddle-tailed architects offer yet another crucial service: slowing the spread of wildfire.
“It’s really not complicated: water doesn’t burn,” says Joe Wheaton, a geomorphologist at Utah State University. After the Sharps Fire charred 65,000 acres in Idaho in 2018, for instance, Wheaton stumbled upon a lush pocket of green glistening within the burn zone—a beaver wetland that had withstood the flames. Yet no scientist had ever rigorously studied the phenomenon. (See California’s record blazes through the eyes of frontline firefighters.)
“Emily’s study couldn’t be more timely,” says Wheaton, who wasn’t involved in the research. “This points toward the importance of nature-based solutions and natural infrastructure, and gives us the science to back it up.”
BOOM BOOM BOOM! The beavers marches right into the headlines and every single depredation permit is suddenly an act of arson and vandalism.
A green, hydrated plant, of course, is also less flammable than a desiccated, crispy one. And that’s what makes beaver ecosystems so fireproof. In beaver-dammed stream sections, Fairfax and Whittle found, vegetation remained more than three times lusher as wildfire raced over the creek. Beavers had so thoroughly saturated their valleys that plants simply didn’t ignite.
These lifeboats don’t merely protect beavers themselves: A broad menagerie—including amphibians, reptiles, birds, and small mammals—likely hunker down in these beaver-built fire “refugia,” Fairfax says. Although wildfire is a vital force that rejuvenates habitat for some creatures, like black-backed woodpeckers, it can devastate other animal populations.
How much does California need beavers? A whole dam lot I’d say. And I am hoping this article is open on the desk of the governor and everyone at CDFW.
In addition, beavers may help an ecosystem recover from a wildfire. In northern Washington State, Alexa Whipple, the director of the Methow Beaver Project, found that beavers promoted the recovery of native species, like willow and aspen.
Beaverless streams, by contrast, were more likely to become colonized with invasive plants after a burn. Whipple also found that beaver ponds improved water quality by capturing the phosphorus-laden sediment that runs off torched hillsides. (Learn how wildfires are increasing worldwide.)
“If we have a wetter landscape, we are going to resist fire and recover from it better,” says Whipple, whose results haven’t yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. “My hope is that wildfire can be the gateway for people to understand the whole suite of benefits that beavers offer.”
Oh my god. Chills. I’m getting actual chills. Is it just me or is this BIG.
Despite all the good that beavers do, thousands are killed every year for flooding roads, cutting down trees, and causing other damage to human property. Employing smarter, more humane policies—using nonlethal flood-prevention devices like “Beaver Deceivers,” for example, and relocating trouble-making individuals instead of killing them—could heal our relationships with beavers and wildfire alike, Fairfax says.
BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM!!!!!!! I’ve been waiting for this moment for 13 years, Tears of joy are making it hard to type. I cannot wait to see the fall out from this.
“Strategically embracing beavers in local watersheds could provide reassurance that you have wet soils and wet plants around your town,” Fairfax says. In fact, as her paper’s title suggests, the U.S. Forest Service might want to consider a new animal mascot: Smokey the Beaver.
That’s me. Grinning from ear to ear. Great work Emily and Ben and Joe and Alexa. We could not be prouder. And hey half of them have been to our beaver festival and since Joe’s sister came a couple years more than half. Beavers are finally getting the credit they deserve, and I for one could not be happier.
Cue the very finest fireworks I know.
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