There are news outlets and there are NEWS OUTLETS. The Conversation is a very powerful website that is paid for by academic institutions and allows professors to publish under a media commons license which means that any news agency is free to reprint it without any credit or payment. That makes it very very popular. So you can imagine how happy I was to see this yesterday. It has literally spawned headlines from Alamo to St Ives.

Beavers offer lessons about managing water in a changing climate, whether the challenge is drought or floods

As climate change causes extreme storms in some areas and intense drought in others, scientists are finding that beavers’ small-scale natural interventions are valuable. In dry areas, beaver ponds restore moisture to the soil; in wet zones, their dams and ponds can help to slow floodwaters. These ecological services are so useful that land managers are translocating beavers in the U.S. and the United Kingdom to help restore ecosystems and make them more resilient to climate change. (more…)