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.
