And on that fateful and long-awaited day that the weary world saw the very best beaver headline in the history of newsprint, you can probably guess whose photo it ran.
The beautiful image that accompanied the seminal article had been taken in this sleepy city in northern California, and featured one of our many yearlings grooming himself on the primary dam. It was placed on wikipedia in 2009 by our good friend and champion editor Rickipedia to better tell the beaver story.
And when the photo appeared in the widely read and internationally acclaimed Gizmodo more than 6 years later it was by-lined: Cheryl Reynolds of Worth A Dam.
We’ve already seen how beavers can save California from its seemingly endless drought. Now it looks like they can save the world from industrial farming by changing the chemistry of the water, making them natural biochemists.
Nitrogen fertilizers on farm land get washed into streams, where they fuel an algae population boom. The algae use up the oxygen in the streams, the rivers, and eventually parts of the ocean, leaving nothing for the fish and leading to large “dead zones.”
Biologists at the University of Rhode Island were studying the nitrogen content of streams and noticed something odd: whenever there were beaver ponds upstream, nitrogen levels dropped. Beaver ponds slow down river water, and they mix it with organic matter, which must have an effect on river chemistry, but scientists didn’t know exactly what was happening in that murky water.
So they made soda-bottle-sized “ponds” that let them study variations on the conditions the beavers set up in their real-life ponds. And they found a kind of reverse nitrogen fixation process was occurring — call it “denitrification.” Bacteria in the dirt and the plant debris turned nitrates into nitrogen gas. The gas bubbled up to the surface and mixed with the atmosphere once more. In some cases, the level of nitrogen in the water dropped 45%.
The effect was most pronounced in small streams, which lead to bigger rivers and eventually to the ocean. Beavers often set up their homes in these tiny streams—or they did before they were trapped or driven away. Re-introducing them might completely change downstream chemistry, make these environments more livable not just for the beavers, but for their fellow creatures, too.
Could there be a better headline? I especially appreciate the use of the phrase “more reasons”. As if we already knew there were SO MANY REASONS which (of course) we do. And I’m wild-crazy about the word only too. Only beavers can save the world – not nuclear power, solar energy or mechanical bees. But BEAVERS. Yeah!
Will nitrogen be the seismic force that shakes up the old “nuisance” ideas about beaver? It has certainly shown up many many times on my google alerts. When this story broke I was alternately hopeful and wary, prompting our librarian friend BK from Georgia to write that he thought we were closer to the beaver-tipping point than I understood, and adding,
“don’t despair that people in general will never properly respect beaver. I think we’re getting pretty close and your persistent blogging has no doubt served as a major catalyst for generating interest and continues to be inspirational!”
Which was a very nice and undeservedly gratifying thing for him to say, but I freely admit that I’m more pessimistic by nature than Bob. (I’d like to blame the fact that I live in a city like Marmeenest, but it probably goes deeper than that.) In the meantime I am going to see the glass half full and appreciate that our Martinez beavers produced what has become the [second most] recognized beaver photo in the world.
Not to mention that glorious fact that the name “Worth A Dam” appeared on Gizmodo during a day in which it received over 75,000,000 views.
