Tag: Felicia Marcus

MARTINEZ ON KGO: SAVING BEAVERS BEFORE IT WAS COOL

My 94 year old uncle told me he saw this on the teevee the other night but I was driving home from the sierras and missed it. Amazing that there’s even a mention of Martinez! (And what sr=ure looks like my video clip from lo these many moons ago).

Stanford University study explains how beaver activity may have long-term benefits on climate change

The data comes at a time of increased interest in nurturing beaver activity, even in semi-urban settings like Martinez, where one celebrated group had discovered dam building in 2007. In a separate paper, Felicia Marcus, a Landreth Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Water in the West program, connects the dams to a drought strategy known as “nature based solutions.”

Well now I’m fine with being lumped in with the likes of Felicia Marcus but I just want to point out that Martinez was saving beavers 15 years before it was what all the cool kids were doing.

Trend setters. That’s us.

She says a number of states have set up programs to compensate land-owners where beaver activity damages property. Meanwhile Dewey and Fendorf are hoping their study will focus attention on how natural ecosystems could be stressed by drought and climate change in the future. And the benefits of supporting natural populations that might be able to help.

A number of states? I guess 1 is a number. Okay I’m counting Washington’s legislation waiting in the wings. And maybe something in Colorado. Anywhere else? I’m all ears.

What’s NOT to love about that sentence? Way to go professor Fendorf. I’m hoping all this nice media attention gets you inspired to chair another beaver dissertation soon – maybe something about how beavers on urban landscapes improve water quality or beaver depredation increases pollution.

BEAVERS GO TO STANFORD

So a very important thing happened last week that you might not have known about. You might remember the name Felicia Marcus who was formerly California’s water board chair and recently appointed a fellow at Stanford’s “Water in the West” program.

Felicia Marcus is the William C. Landreth Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Water in the West Program, an attorney, consultant and member of the Water Policy Group. She most recently served as chair of the California State Water Resources Control Board, implementing laws regarding drinking water and water quality and state’s water rights, hearing regional board water quality appeals, settling disputes and providing financial assistance to communities to upgrade water infrastructure.

Okay so when I read about her a couple years ago I sent her an invite to the California Beaver Summit and she was very interested which surprised me. Imagine how surprised I was this week when her report dropped.

This is one of those weighty documents that comes with an executive summary and lots of media resources so it can make an easy landing in the public eye. Just so you know, NBS are nature based solutions.

We are at a pivotal time in the world’s response to climate change. Fortunately, the policy discourse is evolving at an accelerated rate. There is a growing recognition among world, national, state, tribal, and local leaders of climate change’s catastrophic impact on people and the ecosystems they rely on, and of the need to act rapidly to both mitigate that damage and adapt to the inevitable changes to come. At the same time, there is also a growing global recognition that the loss of ecosystem function has a tremendous impact upon climate, water security, and other essential elements of life. 2 Water is at the core of those key issues. As Brad Udall, Senior Water and Climate Research Scientist at Colorado State University’s Colorado Water Center, is often quoted as saying, “Climate change is water change.” 3 The first effects of climate change manifest in the water sphere, whether through drought, flooding, sea level rise, or stressed species. At the same time, intelligent water management can be at the core of both mitigating and adapting to climate change, with ecosystem and river restoration playing a critical and beneficial role.

While “nature’s engineers” are endearing, the results of their industriousness have also been called out as a natural firebreak and potential widespread tool for slowing fire making their reintroduction an important part of potential plans to expand meadow restoration efforts or integrate meadow restoration into forest management. The role of beavers in wildfire prevention/mitigation has been elevated in the media since the large wildfires of this past year, which should also add focus on this important and restorative means of integrating nature-based solutions. The science demonstrating the benefits of beavers’ hydrological work is young but an active field of research. Researchers in 2015 found that the average beaver pond contains 1.1 million gallons of water and stores another 6.7 million gallons of water underground. Beaver water complexes can even act as a fire break against the megafires that climate chaos is wreaking here. And given that desiccated plants are volatile tinder for fires, it’s possible that a widespread return of beavers could help reduce fires both by keeping plants better watered and by providing more local evaporation from the ponds and transpiration from plants to fuel local rain.

HOHOHO! So it’s possible beavers can prevent fires and save water is it? Stanford thinks we might just need to take the drastic step of introducing them in California. GEE. Guess who will read this rep0rt? EVERYBODY. Guess who’s already read it?

The governor’s chief of staff.

On May 13, 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom announced a proposal for California to develop a new policy, complete with significant funding and staffing, to develop a beaver strategy. Climate and water benefits are both prominently noted. The proposal, which has yet to be adopted by the Legislature, explains: To be successful in our efforts to protect biodiversity, the Department must take a proactive leap towards bringing beavers back onto the landscape through a concerted effort to combine prioritized restoration projects, partnerships with local, federal, and state agencies and tribes, and updated policies and practices that support beaver management and conservation throughout the State.

Beavers are known for their ability to build dams and change waterways – but the ecosystem benefits provided to other native species in the process may be less recognized. It might be odd, but beavers are an untapped, creative climate solving hero that helps prevent the loss of biodiversity facing California. In the intermountain West, wetlands, though they are present on just 2 percent of total land area, support 80 percent of biodiversity

You know what I love? When all the smart people start quoting each other in the hopes that no one will be able to tell eventually who said it first. Go ahead guys. Take credit for beavers. They can handle it.

This paragraph blew me away when I saw it.

Yes that is Amelia’s wonderful logo; in exactly the very best place it could possibly be. Because a perfect illustration will find its way in the world. And that is perfect. We all know it.

At a time when the fate of our planet is at stake, NBS offers the opportunity
to advance sound climate policy while meeting other societal needs, particularly for water. The work is complex but attainable, rewarding, and essential for a liveable future.

Oh and on the FIRST PAGE of the report is the acknowledgements which ends with this remarkable sentence

“Significant source of beaver lore“. Yep. That sound like me. Just call me the beaver-lore warrior. Go read the whole thing and then share it with everyone you know.

BEAVERS, FELICIA

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact, Beavers and water April 4, 2022

Felicia Marcus is member of the California Water Policy board, a fellow at Stanford’s “Water in the West” Program, an attorney, consultant, former colleague of our favorite water woman Ann Riley of the Sf Waterboard, AND regional director of the EPA under Clinton.

She tweeted this yesterday.

I first read about her work at Stanford over a year ago and invited all the fellows to attend the California Beaver Summit. Which she did. And I’m guessing the message landed in all the right places.

LEARNING FROM THE BEAVERS

heidi08 Beavers and water February 16, 2022

Felicia!

Back in March I read about these smart scientists at Stanford working to understand groundwater recharge. I commented then how they neglected to mention beavers and wrote several of them privately about the upcoming beaver conference. One of them even enrolled.

I was told by beaver buddy Ann Riley that Felicia Marcus was an old friend and someone good to have on our side. Now I see why.

Confronting Drought With the Tools of Nature

There are successful models for leveraging natural systems to improve water quality and supplies, enhance biodiversity and blunt the ravages of wildfires. There’s even something we can learn from beavers.

The ongoing drought in the West has dramatically impacted the health, well-being and livelihoods of millions of the region’s residents, from farmers in Colorado struggling to sustain their crops to Californians who have lost their homes to wildfire. The new federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provides substantial funding, including $8.3 billion for water-related programs in the West, to begin to mitigate and adapt to our drying climate. But achieving the scale of impact needed requires a willingness to prioritize investments in nature-based solutions that protect, restore and sustainably manage existing water systems. (more…)

THE FUTURE OF CALIFORNIA’S DRINKING WATER

heidi08 Beavers and climate change, Beavers and groundwater, Beavers and water March 25, 2021

Some headlines are more equal than others.

You can imagine how excited I was when Bob Kobres sent me this article in phys.org. A discussion of drinking water from the smartest minds at Stanford talking about what would save us. Of course I had dramatic notions of what it was going to say about climate change and fires and recharging the aquifer.

Imagine how surprised I was to see what was never mentioned.

The future of America’s drinking water

In 2020 wildfires ravaged more than 10 million acres of land across California, Oregon and Washington, making it the largest fire season in modern history. Across the country, hurricanes over Atlantic waters yielded a record-breaking number of storms.

While two very different kinds of natural disasters, scientists say they were spurred by a common catalyst—climate change—and that both also threaten drinking water supplies. As the nation already wrestles with water shortages, contamination and aging infrastructure, experts warn more frequent supercharged climate-induced events will exacerbate the pressing issue of safe drinking water.

Gosh fires and climate change sound like big dam problems. I wonder what can possibly help get us through this?

Whether it’s floods, fires, storms, droughts or sea level rise, climate impacts have a direct influence on water supplies. What types of climate mitigation policies should the Biden team enact to protect drinking water?

Marcus: Grants and low-cost financing for community preparedness, especially for underserved communities, to adapt and plan for climate impacts would make a tremendous difference. The federal government should be doing leading-edge research, technology development and dispersion for lower-cost sensor and treatment systems for drinking water. Finally, the administration can explicitly make drinking water its highest priority for research and development, funding, and updating regulations based upon science.

Ajami: Water has to be the central part of both climate mitigation and adaptation discussions. Today we are facing many challenges that are the consequence of our approach to securing water and energy resources over the 20th century, building infrastructure networks under the assumption of abundance and overlooking inherent environmental interlinks. Source protection, demand management and public engagement strategies should be at the center of any climate policy.

Wow these women sound really smart. I’m sure they know all about that animal that builds dams to save water right? I mean I’m sure beavers are among the many sound solutions they can access to solve the issue of course?

Groundwater supplies drinking water to 99 percent of rural populations, but overpumping has led to aquifer depletion and water contamination. What federal and state actions can alleviate growing pressures on groundwater?

Knight: We need to change our approach to land use planning by recognizing that the most valuable use for some land is to become a site for managed recharge of the underlying groundwater system. Getting more water into regions below the ground increases the amount of stored water and can help prevent subsidence. The challenge is identifying the optimal locations for recharge zoning and requires seeing below the ground to find coarse-grained materials, such as sand and gravel, that can act as fast paths to move the water from where it is at the surface to the required depths for recharge. This is an area of work I’m currently focused on and it presents great potential to replenish and grow groundwater reserves.

Ajami: I see our groundwater supplies as our social security system; we all contribute and withdraw from it at different times. Unless we collectively contribute to it and protect it from degradation and contamination, there will be none left for future generations to draw from. I believe collaborative governance and land use management are the two most important parts of achieving groundwater sustainability, and neither can work without reliable data sources and accounting mechanisms.

Any minute now I’m sure they’ll talk about beavers. Right?

Well no. If you were holding your breath waiting for them to mention the “B” word you’d have passed out by now and be long dead before it ever happened. Of course I couldn’t let that stand so I wrote these researchers about the difference beavers make in fire resilience, water storage and mitigating climate change. And then suggested they check out what our great speakers at the beaver summit had to say about these subjects.

Two wrote back that they were very interested and would check it out. Felicia said she’s going to attend for as much of it as she can. Riley says she is extremely cool and used to be the head of the SF EPA and they go way back. So I had to find out more. See for yourself.

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