We’re an equal opportunity employer here at beaver central. Yesterday I wrote about Mike Callahan of Massachusetts and today I’m writing about Skip Lisle of Vermont. There was a nice article about the current drought with him (and beavers) featured.
The Ecological Impact Of The Current Drought
Scenes from the West’s five-year drought are striking – the cracked mud at the bottom of a dry reservoir, forests in flames. Wonder what a drought would look like in the Northern Forest? Just look out the window.
This is the first time that any part of New Hampshire has been in an “extreme drought” since the federal government began publishing a drought index in 2000, said Mary Lemcke-Stampone, the state’s climatologist. “Using state records, you have to go back to the early ‘80s to get the extreme dryness we’ve been seeing in southeastern New Hampshire.”
Other parts of the region have been abnormally dry for some time. New York State has issued a drought warning for the Southern Tier and Western New York, which is an extreme drought, while the Adirondacks remain “abnormally dry” according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
Skip Lisle of Beaver Deceiver International, a beaver-control company that uses non-lethal means, said that beavers have droughts covered. “All those little dams and reservoirs keep water on the landscape,” he said. They have floods covered, too, as those same dams and reservoirs release peak flows slowly.
Intact ecosystems, Lisle said, have a way of coping. “Droughts are good. Floods are good. Dynamism is good. It’s been going on forever.”
Yes beavers are good for drought and Skip is good for beavers! Keep doing what you do saving the water-savers and we’ll do our best to write about it here. I’m curious about our own beavers at the moment. Will the arrival of autumn prompt them into starting an actual dam? They have no yearlings to help them so it much be a harder job. Although I guess all beavers everywhere have started thus at some point in their furry lives.
I hope I’m not jinxing anything by making them a video but I think we have to behave like Martinez has beavers because last time I checked it does. And it rained all day yesterday so what’s a girl to do?
