I like to eek out the “beaver stupid” news with a few morsels of good news along the way, but this is a whopping dose! Seems the state of Utah is giving Washington a run for its money in the “castor magnum civicus” contest this year. The Salt Lake Tribune is hooking with the State Department of Wildlife Resources to explain about the benefits of beavers in the habitat. They’ve launched a great video (below) and a major news article both featuring reporter Brett Prettyman. The article starts by mentioning how many beavers we used to have and how that changed with trapping. He writes:
Now, beavers are in demand again, not for their fur but for their engineering expertise, and the water conservation and forest restoration that result from their dam-building skills. “Dams change everything,” said Mary O’Brien, the Utah Forests program manager for Grand Canyon Trust. “Where water was once just passing through the landscape it is suddenly pausing there, recharging aquifers,creating a riparian area and making a place for all kinds of wildlife to live.”
Wow any article that starts with that sentence has my full attention. Its way better than “Once Upon A Time”…I could just nestle in for a nice cozy read.
The beavers may be ready to jump back into areas where their ancestors once felled aspen and willow, but catching live wild animals and hauling them around the state requires planning. That plan is being completed now by a committee formed by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) and will be presented to the public in a series of Regional Advisory Council Meetings in December. If approved by the Utah Wildlife Board, it will become the state’s first management plan for beavers.
Got that? A state beaver management plan that specifically addresses the benefits of beavers to the habitat. The plan, available here, will be voted on in December, and is facing some opposition from people who have long thought of beavers as only pests. To do this at the statewide level is a massive undertaking and involves the re-education of lots of people, including some stalwarts inside the DWR who should know better.
I am wholly impressed with this effort and the smart way it is being launched. It was pointed out to me that Mr. Prettyman’s name rather notably resembles my own, and it is true that his name is only a keystroke to the left away from mine. Similar spirits surely. The other hero of the article is Mary O’Brien, who lead the “sermon on the mount” at the Lands Council conference last year.
O’Brien likes to wonder what the forests of the Southwest looked like before the days when beavers were trapped to such low numbers. She suspects most of the mountain valleys had meandering creeks with lush wetlands frequented by a vast range of wildlife. It is an image she would like to see for herself in places where streams have turned into raging straight-cut channels that erode the banks and carry the water to faraway places.”Dams slow the flow of water coming off the mountains. They act like speed bumps and spread the water out on the land,” she said. “They create a dramatic change in the hydrology of the landscape, and that is a change that may serve us all.”
Ahhh Mary! You’re a girl after my own heart! Do you have any friends in California? I would love to meet them!
