Check out Amanda Parrish giving testimony at the state house about HB2349. Here’s a little taste
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON:
5 NEW SECTION. Sec. 1. The legislature finds that beavers have
6 historically played a significant role in maintaining the health of
7 watersheds in the Pacific Northwest and act as key agents in riparian
8 ecology. The live trapping and relocating of beavers has long been
9 recognized as a beneficial wildlife management practice, and has been
10 successfully utilized to restore and maintain stream ecosystems for
11 over fifty years. The benefits of active beaver populations include
12 reduced stream sedimentation, stream temperature moderation, higher
13 dissolved oxygen levels, overall improved water quality, increased
14 natural water storage capabilities within watersheds, and reduced
15 stream velocities. These benefits improve and create habitat for many
16 other species, including endangered salmon, river otters, sandhill
17 cranes, trumpeter swans, and other riparian and aquatic species.
18 Relocating beavers into their historic habitat provides a natural
1 mechanism for improving the environmental conditions in Washington’s
2 riparian ecosystems without having to resort to governmental regulation
3 or expensive publically funded engineering projects.
In case you ever wondered, this is why Washington makes California look like beaver-barbarians. Amanda does an excellent job and even fields a very annoying question about fecal colliform from a senator that says he used to swim where beavers ‘did their business’ and knows its an issue. Here’s a picture of the ‘issue’.
Oh, and Jon ran into a channel 2 van filming the primary dam at 5:30 this am who apparently wanted to know if “We were worried about the lack of water in the creek”.
Now news cameras are coming to film the lack of water behind the dams?
