Matt Cawood, agricultural writer from Australia, began a series of articles on his blog for Stock and Land entitled “Beavers and the Murray.” In it he extols the book with which I hope by now you are all familiar: Eric Collier’s Three Against the Wilderness. Like others he was interested in the effectiveness of trapping small ponds of water through little dams and how it created a lusher, greener habitat that could withstand even dry periods. I was overly excited by the article, and suggested he might want to get in touch with our New Zealand friend who is talking about this very point with the local magistrate this month. He wrote back with a tone that could be politely described as gubenatorial,
I can’t imagine beavers themselves can or should play any role in Australia’s environment. It’s the principle of slowing water’s flow through the landscape that is interesting.
To paraphrase the Monks…Great Dams! Shame about the Beavers….
Okay so today is part II of his series in which he reveals that his secret to water holding isn’t beavers, its a series of low leaky weirs that hold the water back and an abundance of reeds that help them do so. The water is slowed and filtered, and the water table rises and in the hard rains the land is able to keep some of the aquatic wealth that otherwise pours uselessly out to the sea. He wonders what would the effect have been if such dams had been built on miles of wetlands 20 years ago?
Pointedly, he does not wonder if beavers have any role to play in Australia’s water problems. He also doesn’t wonder about any costs for building or maintaining these “leaky weirs” and whether it would be problematic for human hands to do so over miles of creek bed across the entire country. Another commenter wrote that beavers were reintroduced in South America and look at all the trouble they’ve caused. I guess that means that Australian farmers never prune their trees to make them grow back, because the failure to coppice is what makes the fate of South American trees different, not the lack of eager beaver predators.
Obviously his basic point is that beavers structurally may be onto something, but the beavers themselves are not welcome. Hmm. I wonder how Mr. Collier would feel about that takeaway from his novel?
