Carlisle floods: bring back the trees, and the beavers!
The key to reducing the risk of more floods like those in Carlisle is to realise that conventional ‘flood defence’ can never provide security against the ever more extreme weather events that global warming will bring. We must embrace natural solutions to holding back flood waters: more trees; and bring back the beavers!
Trees are important for another reason too. They are food for beavers, and beavers use them to build their dams. And beavers will do all the work of damming up the streams and gullies for us, free of charge. And that’s absolutely key to restoring landcapes and making them water retentive.
We should therefore select water-loving species that are palatable to beavers – like poplars, willows, sallows and alders – and establish them along watercourses, ditches, streams, ponds and eroded upland gullies.
The dams would not just reduce flood risk: they would also prevent the summer droughts to which the area is also prone as a result of the rapid water drainage, and restore healthy river flows throughout the year.
I would not wish to pretend that every flooding event can be prevented by planting trees and restoring beavers. There will still be a role for orthodox ‘hard engineering’ in protecting vulnerable flood plain settlements. But that approach alone can never provide the protection we need, especially with the rising power and ferocity of the weather we must expect in a warming world.
It’s time for governments to move beyond the usual rhetoric of ‘flood defence’ and to move into a new era of rebuilding natural resilience to extreme climate events, using the gifts that nature herself has given us.
Can I get an amen?
Carlisle is across the Scottish border in Cumbria, which is just east of the Lake District of England. It was hit with severe storms causing the river to top its banks andmake flooding in December. Many, many families were forced to evacuate for the holidays. British soldiers were deployed to help out and keep peace. Damage to roads in Cumbria are already reported to cost upwards of 100 million pounds.
So, naturally, the Ecologist is writing about what nature could provide to prevent such damage. The author of the article happens to be the editor of the Ecologist, one Oliver Tickell, which explains the very positive press the Ecologist has been granting to beavers this year. I am mortally sombered at the damage, which we’ve heard very little about in the US. But grateful that folks are thinking about what ecosystem engineers could do to help.
