Ever since I added talkwakers as a beaver search tool I’ve had more articles to write about than I can keep up with. Every day there are new ones and I prioritize old ones in a file. Except today. When there was NOTHING. You and I are entirely caught up on the breaking beaver news. I had to go hunting to find this, which I think I wrote about before. But I like it anyway.
Beavers Are Awesome For Ecological Conservation
Beavers are proving to be quite the helpful little creatures: First, they proved themselves to be awesome engineers in the California drought. Now, they’ve found a new vocation as biochemists. A recent study has shown that beaver populations are helping to remove nitrogen from waters in northeastern America.
The use of nitrogen fertilizers has been rising for years as part of a farmer’s armory to increase yields, fill pockets and feed mouths. However, when the nitrogen seeps into nearby streams, it causes an algae bloom. The nitrogen fuels the massive growth of these microbes, which use all of the oxygen and subsequently starve the fish and other water-dwelling species of their share.
However, beavers can help counterbalance this. The study, published in the Journal of Environmental Quality, found that the process of beavers building ponds increased the interaction of water with soil and plant matter. The soil and organic matter contained denitrifying bacteria that turned nitrates into nitrogen gas, hence removing it from the system. The study found that this process can reduce the nitrogen levels in the water by 5-45%.
Hurray for beavers and hurray for science! Beavers do very important things for water and nitrogen. I love that these plucky research-o-philes just stumbled on the fact that beavers are useful and think that should change everything now. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Case in point:
Despite the ecological importance of beavers, they still face threats from fur trading and the stigma of being viewed as a pest by salmon farmers.
Beavers are a problem for salmon farmers? Umm I assume what that refers to is that folks worry beavers are a problem for salmon, AND also for farmers. And they just condensed it down to salmon farmers! Heh heh heh. There really aren’t that many salmon farmers per se.
(I’m reminded of the old joke where than man buys 5 dozen baby chicks from the feed store, and a few weeks later is back for another 5. The owner is surprised and asks went wrong with the first lot, and he replies, “I dunno, maybe I’m planting them too deep.” Ba-da-bump.)
I realize there is actually is farmed salmon, but the beaver as nuisance argument goes way beyond that. The article ends well,
Arthur Gold, a natural resources scientist who worked on the project, said in a statement, “It’s noteworthy that the beavers have such an impact on improving nitrogen downstream. We have a species whose population crashed from wide-spread trapping 150 years ago. With their return they help solve one of the major problems of the 21st century. I don’t want to minimize that. We have to remember that those ponds wouldn’t be there without the beavers.”
Allow me to repeat that. Beavers solve one of the major problems of the 21st century. And help regulate droughts and flooding. And increase biodiversity and repair down cutting in streams. And restore the salmon and steelhead population.
And you are bothered because they’re inconvenient? Here endeth the lesson.
Castor canadensis
Martinez, CA
