EMILY FAIRFAX AND BEAVER FIRESENSE

heidi08 Beavers and Fire Prevention September 24, 2021

A couple of weeks ago Emily Fairfax posted some photos on FB showing her trip to Colorado and saying she had shown a reporter from NPR around the sight of the largest fire which happened to have some amazing beaver habitat that survived. You’ll remember I shared her google map of the visit which is very cool and if you haven’t seen it you still should.

Well that story dropped this morning on the local KUNC station and its definitely worth a listen. After which I am sure you will join me in a hearty chorus of “Go Emily!” as we raise our glasses and click our coffee mugs together.

Enjoy!

Even Colorado’s Largest Wildfire Was No Match For Beavers

Deep in the Cameron Peak burn scar, nestled among charred hills, there’s an oasis of green — an idyllic patch of trickling streams that wind through a lush grass field. Apart from a few scorched branches on the periphery, it’s hard to tell that this particular spot was in the middle of Colorado’s largest-ever wildfire just a year ago.

his wetland was spared thanks to the work of beavers.

The mammals, quite famously, dam up streams to make ponds and a sprawling network of channels. Beavers are clumsy on land, but talented swimmers; so the web of pools and canals lets them find safety anywhere within the meadow.

On a recent visit to that patch of preserved land in Poudre Canyon, ecohydrologist Emily Fairfax emphasized the size of the beavers’ canal network.

“Oh my gosh, I can’t even count them,” she said. “It’s a lot. There’s at least 10 ponds up here that are large enough to see in satellite images. And then between all those ponds is just an absolute spiderweb of canals, many of which are too small for me to see until I’m here on the ground.”

Do see the charred brush there? The fire burned right to the waters edge. Everything went in flames. Except what the beaver had made and flooded and maintained. Maybe their lodge even burned. But no matter, they dumped the seared logs and made it anew.

Fairfax researches how beavers re-shape the landscapes where they live. Across the West, she’s seen beaver-created wetlands survive wildfires.

“When you’re at this beaver complex,” she said, “it never stops being green. Everything else in the landscape – the hill slopes on either side, they both charred. They lost all their vegetation during this fire. But this spot, it did not. These plants were here last year and they’re still here today.”

The Cameron Peak Fire left some hints that it had burned nearby, like these blackened branches poking out of an otherwise verdant meadow.

Fairfax stands in the middle of a vibrant meadow, with golden-green grass up to her knees. She points to a row of trees about 100 feet away, where the trunks have clearly been singed, but brown needles still cling to branches – a sign of “moderately intense” burning. Just another 100 feet past that, another row of trees has been scorched completely black and free of needles – a telltale indicator of “high intensity” burning.

Isn’t it amazing to think that Emily was inspired to change direction in her own life and leave engineering to go study beavers after she watched Jari Osbourne’s awesome documentary? Who knows who is right now getting inspired by Emily’s work and going to make the next transformation?

“The beaver complex and the beaver wetland is so much more than the dam,” Fairfax said. “It’s the channels, it’s the digging, it’s the chewing, it’s the constantly changing the landscape, the dynamics, the flexibility.”

Beavers have millions of years of practice repairing dams and shaping rivers, and that makes them capable water managers.

Fairfax did see a beaver complex serve as a fire break one time in Colorado, but she said it’ll take far more research before we can figure out how effective they are when it comes to slowing down wildfires on a large scale. But for now, these areas are surviving as oases of green in big fires all across the West.

I will say Joe Wheaton sounds like a little bit of a killjoy in the quote alex chose to use from him. Lots of little bits of water add up. And he knows that better than anyone.

FIREPROOF

Looks like Dr, Emily Fairfax had a wonderful summer vacation. She just posted this:

The 2020 Cameron Peak Fire was Colorado’s biggest fire. And yet, a bunch of the beaver complexes in it didn’t burn. This past week I went & saw one of the untouched beaver wetlands surrounded by burned trees & hills in person. You can see it (in 360 view) too! Click the link below to view an interactive 360 photo in Google Maps.

Click on the photo to explore a truly wonderful beaver pond. If you honestly aren’t curious to see for yourself there is little hope I can persuade you. Just do it.

EMILY, BEAVERS AND CLIMATE CHANGE

heidi08 Beavers and climate change July 28, 2021

The question is really getting to be, how long can you wait for another Emily Fairfax beaver update? Obviously the answer is “hardly any time at all.” And that’s good, because it’s summer vacation and we might as well keep her busy on the airways. This dropped last night.

Beavers aid in climate battle, local experts fight to protect species in California

Wild beavers play a critical role in the fight against climate change by creating wetlands that combat drought and wildfire.

Lovely! Hmm… the narrator has me a little puzzled…”Wild beavers? Do you mean “Beavers in the wild”? That epithet sounds a little like a spring break movie. Also. just to clarify, beavers do get trapped in Oregon and Washington but never mind. Oh and nobody knows how many beavers in California are depredated because no one counts. We can only count how many PERMITS are issued. Which was more than 2500 last year. Hold onto the narrative as long as you possibly can because someone eventually is going to bungle it up and blame you anyway. That’s my motto.

Anyway it’s nice to see a reminder that beavers matter to climate change and stream temperature. We need lots more of these reports every day. Thanks Emily!

Rusty Cohn, Napa beavers Mother and child

Rusty shared this photo this week and I loved it at once. Aside from being the sweetest dam moment I’ve seen on film. it also looks EXACTLY like our beavers. Sometimes beaver coloring and shading looks so different, but these are clearly kindred to our own. Enjoy!

BEAVER FIREFIGHTERS ON THE RADIO

heidi08 Beavers and Fire Prevention, Who's talking about beavers now? July 24, 2021

Time for another fun interview, this time from Emily Faifax at KCRW in Santa Monica. I knew the Doty story would get a bunch of eyes. With host Madeleine Brand.

Beavers to prevent wildfires? Conservationists are enlisting the help of these buck-toothed rodents

As California continues to grapple with a mega-drought and wildfires, we’re trying to do whatever we can to help our parched landscapes and abate that wildfire threat. But the process can be costly and time-consuming.

A few weeks ago, the Sacramento Bee reported on a floodplain in Placer County. During California’s last big drought in 2014, ecologists wanted to restore the dry, barren grassland. It would’ve taken 10 years and cost as much as $2 million. But there was another option: beavers.

Conservationists turned the buck-toothed, oversized rodents loose and got out of their way. And unlike every other contractor on the planet, they finished under budget and ahead of schedule.

CALIFORNIA IS SURROUNDED BY BEAVER NEWS

heidi08 Beavers July 3, 2021

It seems like ages ago now but when I was sending off my OpEd and hoping it would get published two weeks ago I used what is known as the focused “Spray and Pray” technique. Meaning that I chose a few likely papers that I respected and sent to each figuring that whomever wanted it first would win.

The day after I sent I was promptly rejected by the LA time, which made me doubt that it would ever get published anywhere. Then the next day the SF Chron said it might work with some edits which I was happy to do. But the one paper I never heard from was the Sacramento Bee.

Owned by McClatchy and fiercely independent they are very well respected and the paper that ran Tom Knudsen pulitzer-winning series on USDA APHIS, Since they’re based where most of CDFW decisions get made they were my first choice and I was a little bummed they never responded.

Now I know why. They didn’t need an OpEd. They were soon to be running the real deal written by Isabella Bloom.

A dry California creek bed looked like a wildfire risk. Then the beavers went to work

Seven years ago, ecologists looking to restore a dried-out Placer County floodplain faced a choice: Spend at least $1 million bringing in heavy machines to revive habitat or try a new approach. They went for the second option, and turned to nature’s original flood manager to do the work — the beaver.

he creek bed, altered by decades of agricultural use, had looked like a wildfire risk. It came back to life far faster than anticipated after the beavers began building dams that retained water longer.

“It was insane, it was awesome,” said Lynnette Batt, the conservation director of the Placer Land Trust, which owns and maintains the Doty Ravine Preserve.

“It went from dry grassland. .. to totally revegetated, trees popping up, willows, wetland plants of all types, different meandering stream channels across about 60 acres of floodplain,” she said.

Are you excited yet? This article got me very, very excited. Keep reading.

The project is supported by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, through its Partners for Fish and Wildlife program. Since 2014, it has worked with the Placer Land Trust to restore and enhance habitat for migratory birds, waterfowl, salmon and steelhead by unleashing the beavers, a keystone species.

Damion Ciotti, a restoration biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who led the project, said hepredicted the Doty Ravine project would take a decade to reconnect the stream to the floodplain, but to his surprise, it was restored in just three years.

Ciotti and other restoration ecologists are working on more beaver restoration projects with the Maidu Summit Consortium at Yellow Creek in Plumas County and the Nature Conservancy at Childs Meadow in Tehama County. Ciotti estimates there are likely dozens of other smaller projects throughout the state using these approaches.

Damion! The wonderful and unassuming powerhouse that happens to believe in beavers. I first met him years ago when I was speaking in Placer at SARSAS about the relationship between beavers and salmon. In those days SARSAS hadn’t broken ranks with the beaver-hating Mary Tappel who infamously misled city staff in Martinez. Damion made sure he went to both talks. And said mine was way better so of course we became friends.

Known as nature’s engineers, beavers can change a landscape to cater to its needs better than any other animal after humans. That’s their advantage against their predators in the wild.

Beavers and humans like to live in similar places — near water sources ideal for agriculture — so the two species come into conflict. When beavers dam up a stream to make their homes, the ensuing flooding impacts nearby landowners. Or, when people invest in expensive tree-planting projects, beavers may take a liking to those trees and cut them down.

As a result, trapping is a common solution to beaver nuisance. That’s why the first step to beaver restoration is to stop trapping them and wait for beavers to return.

Well also it’s frickin’ Placer county which traps more beavers than anywhere else in the state. Someone might have mentioned that.

Beaver wetlands are like giant sponges, collecting water from rain and snowmelt during the winter and slowly releasing moisture during the summer and dry periods. As a result, they’re helpful during droughts and against wildfires.

“In my research, I saw it persist for three drought years in a row and then the drought ended,” Fairfax said. “That water can remain accessible year after year after year during drought.”

Fairfax, who published a research paper titled “Smokey the Beaver” about the drought and wildfire implications of beaver restoration projects, said she found evidence of five instances where beaver wetlands stalled the progress of a wildfire including the 2000 Manter fire in California and the 2018 Badger Creek fire in Wyoming.

Bring in the expert to talk about her own research! No wonder they didn’t need an OpEd!

Wetland vegetation doesn’t turn into the dry, high-risk fuel that feeds wildfires. Instead, the moisture can slow down the wildfire.

“It’s huge when you think about fires in California because time is so valuable,” Fairfax said. “If you can stall the fire, if you can stop it from just ripping through the landscape, even if that beaver pond can’t actually stop the fire itself, just stalling it can give the firefighters a chance to get a hold on it.”

These lush green beaver wetlands also protect wildlife that can’t outrun a wildfire.

“The beavers are creating these patches, these fire refuges that don’t burn anywhere near as intensely,” Fairfax said. “So it’s a relatively safe spot for animals to wait and let the fire pass.”

Wonderful! A full week in which California is surrounded by news about beavers fighting fire. Now we just need the LA Times. The ONLY mistake with Isabella’s fantastic article that I can see is that they didn’t run it with the single best photo that makes the entire argument without a word. If she had just included that it would have been perfect.