Beavers Used To Restore Wildlife Habitat In Lincoln

Who would believe over the last ten years Lincoln has been issued the single most depredation permits for beavers? Well this story couldn’t happen to a nicer town. Great work Damion Ciotti who talked them into it and all the people who are taking credit for the idea they resisted on camera.

Another great news story from Lucy Sherriff in the BBC today. You’ll remember she’s the one that wrote the fantastic piece recently in the Smithsonian and that great one in the Sierra Club. I knew she was working on something about beavers and deserts and connected her with Carol Evans of Nevada, but this is wayy better than I expected.

One small, plucky animal has an outsized ability to transform its environment, helping to replenish river ecosystems even in the desert.

Getting these beaver populations to thrive in Utah’s desert landscape has been a challenging task for Emma Doden, a masters student in translocated beaver ecology at Utah State University. Doden and several other researchers set out to reintroduce beavers to the drought and fire-stricken land. Water shortages are severe here, and much of the river ecosystem is degraded. Doden’s primary goal is to restore the quantity and quality of water in eastern Utah, whose waterways sustain an array of wildlife, riverbank vegetation and endangered fish species.

“In desert environments, water can be very limiting, but it serves as the lifeline to so many species that live out there, including livestock,” she says.

Ahh Emma Doden is getting plenty of mileage out of her beaver thesis. Let’s hope it leaves a mark.

The animals are best known for their skill at building dams in rivers, which create wetlands and standing ponds. These changes in the watershed contribute to a number of improvements in the environment, including better stream quality, leading to healthier fish populations; carbon capture via the shallow ponds which hold back silt and sequester the gas; increasing resistance against wildfires; and providing a habitat for other animals. All this contributes to their status as a “keystone” species, essentially defined as an animal that multiple other species rely on within an ecosystem.

As the world heats up and extreme weather becomes more frequent, scientists have been rushing to reintegrate beavers into struggling ecosystems and dry landscapes.

Emma’s finishing her master’s and handing the work to another beaver disciple. Good Lets keep the good news coming. All the way to California. Cue Emily Fairfax,

If beavers can be persuaded to stay put, their impacts can be wide-reaching. Just one beaver dam can improve water quality, as well as acting as a firebreaker for the surrounding land.

North America is facing an intense battle against wildfires, which raged across the American West in 2020 – including in Utah – burning 8.8 million acres (3.6 million hectares) of land, and could be even worse this year.

Beavers, some scientists believe, could provide the key to reviving watersheds and mitigating wildfire risks. In a paper published last year, Emily Fairfax found that areas where beaver dams were present were better at surviving wildfires than regions without beavers.

“I thought that beaver dams would work sometimes,” Fairfax says of the creatures’ impact on wildfire-ravaged regions. “But in every one of the sites I studied, if there was a dam, the land was protected from fire.”

Nice. Can someone please shout this from the mountain top? Now let’s hear it for Castor Fiber too.

“We do have farmers – and fishermen – who are very keen to see beavers coming back, who recognise they are great for fish and the livestock and irrigation,” Brazier says. “But there is a group who doesn’t want to see beavers back in the landscape, and one of the key things has been knowing where farmers are coming from, knowing what their concerns are, and engaging with them. It’s an ongoing process and we’re working with them to manage any negative impacts.

“It’s about learning to live with these animals again in a renewed co-existence.”

Beavers might well incur costs to landowners, but Brazier believes they can be addressed by providing adequate compensation for any flooded fields higher in the watershed. He believes it’s a small cost in comparison to that of other flooding prevention, or the value of the other benefits that beavers bring such as water quality improvement, carbon storage and enhanced biodiversity.

That’s the way with spreading the beaver gospel. First your the only one. Then there are two lone voices in the wilderness. And suddenly you can barely pick up a copy of Teen Monthly without reading another great story about how much they matter. Good.

With beaver releases happening in South Downs, Wales, Cornwall and Cheshire, across the pond in Utah, Idaho and on Indian Reservations in California, Washington and Oregon, and even more on the horizon, many more of us could soon be feeling the effects of beavers flourishing in the wild.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd scene. Who will be writing about the good things beavers do tomorrow? I can’t wait to read all about it.