Beavers may offer environmental second chance

The key variable wasn’t precipitation. It was the presence of beavers, whose deep-water ponds and connecting channels were actually mitigating the effects of severe drought. “They’re really hydrological engineers,” says Hood. “Everything they do is about maximizing water.”

Hood’s work figures prominently in The Beaver Whisperers, a documentary from filmmaker Jari Osborne that airs March 28 on CBC’s The Nature of Things.
It also reflects how scientists and environmentalists are starting to amend some long-held views of Castor canadensis.

Lots of good news about Thursday’s debut of “The Beaver Whisperers“. I am practically a kid in a candy shop. It is still March and we have already had 7 articles this year about the benefits of beavers, from places like Nevada and Alberta. I just love the impact this documentary will have.

You know there will be folks that are upset that they don’t talk enough about chewing trees or ruining culverts, but lets hope when they sit down to write letters, they google the issue and find their way to US who will be delighted to help them find real solutions.

Scientists like Hood believe we should, and it’s not just because beavers have survived climate change in the past. In our own age of global warming, beavers may offer us a kind of environmental second chance, courtesy of their ability to preserve water resources, mitigate drought and boost biodiversity. By helping them, we help ourselves.

Just how many beavers now populate North America — and hence the extent of their recovery — remains an open question. Hood, for one, is cautious about offering an estimate, save that any habitat capable of supporting beaver probably has them today.

“They’ve come back as much as they can,” she says. “They have done a remarkable job.”

Hmm. I can think of LOTS of more places that could support more beavers if we could just use a crowbar or a power tool to open some minds and educate some cities about their value. Take Martinez for instance. We could have a few colonies upstream to slow all that seasonal flash. And Concord and Walnut Creek and Clayton. Beavers are missing from LOTS of places they belong, Glynnis. If we had protection at every culvert to start maybe we could creep a little closer to the 60,000 million beavers we were supposed to have at the beginning.

Two pieces of excellent news that you absolutely will not want to miss, and (like all good Catholics), I’m saving the best one for last. The first is an excellent op-ed from beaver champion Mary O’brien of the Grand Canyon Trust in Utah, where the cartoon-cat county that is holding the beaver festival next month just decided it didn’t want beavers.

The good beaver do

If there’s any wildlife species that should unite Utahns it’s the beaver. After all, we’re the second-driest state in the nation, and more water isn’t likely. Our state’s southern half is hot and getting hotter. We’re in trouble, but beaver are waiting in the wings to help us.

Their dams slow the run of snowmelt off the mountains, which can transform creeks that have begun to dry up by late summer into creeks that once again run all year. While the temperature rises, their dams transfer water underground that emerges cooler downstream. As our wetlands disappear, their dams create new wetlands. As reservoirs fill with sediment, their dams extend reservoir life by capturing and storing sediment upstream.

This sediment raises the beds of streams that have become incised ditches and reconnects them with their floodplain, allowing the streams to once again support the willow, cottonwood and aspen that play key roles in holding our watersheds together. As the gouging of storms increases, beaver dams act as speed bumps.

Ranchers get expanded riparian areas, a livestock heaven. Anglers and hunters get more fish and ducks, and enlarged wildlife habitat. Wildlife watchers get more birds, frogs, otter, mink, and … beavers. Children get to hear a beaver’s tail slap a warning that humans are around. We all get new ponds and meadows.

Now do you see why the first time I read about Mary O’brien I thought she was the most amazing and wonderfully brilliant ecologically minded woman in the known world? The article that first tipped me off (and remains my favorite beaver article ever) was from the High Country News lo these many years ago, and described her as having a ‘thick rope of a gray braid’. It makes me smile to remember wandering star struck around at the start of the beaver conference in 2011 checking everyone’s hair to see which one was her!

This one!

What’s not to like about beavers? Why did Garfield County commissioners recently request that the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources not move beavers from problem sites to good sites in their county? According to Commissioner Clare Ramsey, it’s because the motives of environmentalists are suspect: They might use beavers to attack livestock grazing on public lands.

The truth? Well-managed livestock can allow streams to become great habitat for beavers, and then beavers can return the favor by expanding the riparian meadows in which livestock love to graze.

Which brings us to a great first-ever beaver celebration scheduled here in Utah — in Garfield County, no less. The Leave It to Beavers Festival will take place Sept. 21-22 at Escalante Petrified Forest State Park near Escalante. There will be music, food, a live-trapping demonstration, great children’s activities, Hogle Zoo animals, hikes to beaver dams led by local residents, informational displays, and art and photos of Utah’s beavers (it’s not too late to enter one of the four art and photo contests).

Nice! This is as good a time as any to remind readers about this from their festival website under ‘about’:

Why a Leave It to Beavers Festival?

In July 2011 Mary O’Brien of Grand Canyon Trust had a grand day in Martinez, California at the fourth annual Martinez beaver festival sponsored by the local group, Worth a Dam! (Their rollicking, inspiring website: www.MartinezBeavers.org) We decided to shamelessly copy in Utah the spirit, fun, and great information of that Martinez beaver festival.

And that’s what I call full circle. Go read the entire article and add a yea-beaver comment to the mix! Garfield will thank you!

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And now for the even more exciting news on last night’s kit-watch. We arrived early because we wanted to see if Jr was coming out from the regular bank hole and then going upstream before coming down from the primary (thus giving a false impression of having slept up there!) I have a hard time imagining that beavers decide whimsically where and with whom they are going to sleep every night, and wanted to understand it better. It was very high tide, so high that the secondary dam was sunk under a foot of water that extended all the way into the scrape where it hasn’t reach for years. No beavers emerged until almost 7:30 and then SURPRISE) it was Jr. coming obviously from upstream and browsing the blackberry bushes before swimming ‘through’ the secondary dam and toodling around the boundaries.

He was so relaxed and far afield that we were beginning to get nervous that the high tide had ‘taken away the toddler fence’ and he was going to swim out to sea, when along came two adult beavers swimming side by side from upstream. (Mom and Dad?) The larger one went ‘through’ the dam and the smaller one swam up to the kit, touching noses and swimming in a circle with our little fellow who (much to my delight and amazement) gave the classic KIT VOCALIZATION and whined several times, paddling onto her back and tail.

It was too dark for photos but we stood on the bridge oohing and ahhing as mom and Jr. swam side by side past the secondary, and far down stream out to the wide world beyond. Dad was ahead of them but still visible and I could tell it was an important night for beaver education. I wondered if the parents had ‘decided’ this ahead of time? Or just read his behavior and responded? We have never seen them both come at the same time. and never from upstream. It made me also realize that in super high tides their usual bank hole might not stay dry, that that might be why they move up stream, which makes sense.

The very best part was that our little one wasn’t alone anymore and we got to see how careful and caring his parents are of him. That was easily worth an early dinner, rowdy homeless, and a pesky yellowjacket. I am so proud of our beaver family! In case you forgot what a beaver kit sounds like, here’s a reminder.

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Finally: Your Help is Needed

Moses said someone was fishing from the footbridge the other night, an adult man who refused to leave and was dropping his baited hook in front of the little kit to get him interested and dropping it on his back on purpose because it was ‘funny’. Obviously a kit doesn’t want to eat a worm but Jr won’t actually know that until he takes a bite and by then the hook would be in his mouth or throat or intestines. The protective disapproval of a bold community needs to help keep an eye on our little kit and make sure this @$$-%#*% fishes somewhere else. Please, if you have time in the next couple of weeks in the evening come by and lend a watchful eye.