I was thrilled to hear this interview and especially enjoyed the discussion of BDAs. At one time they were both hydrologists with the forest service/ Suzanne is now retired and Kami Ellison is working in the private sector. Together they make a whopping duo of beaver advocacy in this fullsome interview.
Enjoy and share widely.
Our good friend Suzanne Fouty, formerly a hydrolgist of the USFS teamed up with Bill Ripple professor of Ecology at OSU to publish this op ed. I know you’ll want to see it and pass it around.
Fish and wildlife are declining due to habitat loss. Major river basins, such as the Colorado and Klamath river basins, find themselves faced with water shortages and rising conflicts. Various salmon populations are facing extinction as their numbers continue to decline.
To improve conditions, we need abundant beavers building abundant beaver dams and habitat on our federally managed public lands, the source of much of our water and strongholds of biodiversity.
To get abundant beavers, dams and habitat, their survival and dispersal rates must increase. Closing these public lands to beaver trapping and hunting would do both.
Why is a closure needed? Most beaver take occurs in the winter months, when beaver pelts are at their best (a pelt brings $10 to $20). Winter is also the beaver’s breeding and pregnancy season. Entire families can be removed in a single season, suppressing population growth and future dispersal.
An excellent point. Trapping season is the very time the population is about to increase. Of course Depredation season is year-round.
The loss of beavers leaves dams unattended. As dams fail and are not repaired, ponds drain, water tables drop, habitats unravel and benefits are lost.
What type of benefits is lost? Beavers are nature’s firefighters and drought busters. Their dams, ponds and wetlands store carbon, provide valuable salmon-rearing habitat, diminish flood peaks and create high-quality wildlife habitat.
Beaver habitat can also improve water quality and help sustain summer flows, important to cities, towns, farmers and ranchers.
But these benefits require abundant wetlands and vibrant stream systems, which are currently scarce on public lands. This scarcity is due in large part to ongoing legal trapping and hunting of beaver, which continues to suppress population growth, dispersal, and beaver dam and habitat creation.
At present, the state wildlife agencies set beaver trapping and hunting seasons, with the exception of California and New Mexico, which now protect beavers. The primary focus of the state wildlife agencies is to serve trappers and hunters because these user groups contribute to agency funding through equipment purchases via the Pittman-Robertson Act and trapping and hunting licenses.
Well I wouldn’t go so far as saying California protects beavers, but I get your point.
Depending on the state, the beaver trapping/hunting season ranges from a few months to year-round. In most places, there are no limits to the number of beavers that can be killed, and reporting is minimal.
This narrow state agency management focus is limiting the productivity and biodiversity of our public lands at a time when climate changes are accelerating. We need to let our congressional representatives know that beavers must be protected on federally managed public lands so they can help restore the many thousands of miles of degraded streams that currently exist on these lands.
In the process of stream restoration, they will create numerous wetlands, resulting in major environmental and economic benefits such as natural wildfire breaks, micro reservoirs that sustain streamflows during drought and dampen flood peaks, and vastly improve fish and wildlife habitat.
Congress, and multiple rulings by the Supreme Court, have given the federal government the constitutional and statutory authority to manage fish and wildlife on federally managed public lands. Given that most state wildlife agencies refuse to protect beavers, the federal government needs to step in if we are to maximize wildfire and drought readiness on public lands.
I’m not sure that congress is more po[ular than beavers are in Oregon or anywhere else for that matter?
Protecting beavers on our federally managed public lands is a nature-based climate solution that will lead to major stream restoration and wetland creation, and bring tangible benefits to our communities. The wildfire and drought clocks are ticking down.
Let’s protect beavers on our federal public lands so they can finally swim into action for the benefit of all. Go Beavs!
Go Suzanne! You message needs to reach a lot of ears and eyes. Let’s hope this starts something good.
Lots more good coverage of the beaver letter to Biden while the crazy beaver dam removal article from TWS dissolves into obscurity. This morning there is even coverage from Oregon Capitol Press, which means it will be seen by the broader capitol Press.!
BAKER CITY, Ore. — A coalition is calling on President Joe Biden to issue an executive order banning trapping and hunting of beavers on public land managed by federal agencies.
The group, which sent a letter to the White House on Feb. 27, contends that killing beavers — most are trapped rather than hunted — is preventing beavers from expanding their populations.
They advocate for the federal government to help boost beaver numbers to take advantage of the benefits of their dams. Chief among those is storing water, both in ponds and wetlands, which can help ease the harmful effects of drought and climate change on a variety of activities, including farming and ranching, said Suzanne Fouty, a retired U.S. Forest Service hydrologist who lives in Baker City.
“Our public lands are the best place to begin landscape-scale stream, wetland and riparian recovery needed to help tackle the challenges our communities face,” Fouty said.
Fouty is one of two co-signers of the letter to Biden, along with Adam Bronstein, Oregon and Nevada director for the Western Watersheds Project.
Which is good because Suzanne was anxiously watching who might pick this up, the louder the message the more likely it is to be heard. The article itself seems a little AI to me because it quotes Fouty and then says “Says Fouty who has a doctorate”
Hahahahaha. Maybe you could say that a little better? You know like “Hydrologist/Soils specialist. Retired Forest Service from Wallowa-Whitman National Forest”
Just a thought.
The Herald and News out of Klamath Falls does a slightly better job.
Beavers are natural engineers. They build dams, slowing down and spreading water that would otherwise run off — and that makes them a natural ally for Biden’s climate agenda, said Suzanne Fouty, a retired U.S. Forest Service hydrologist who co-authored the letter.
“It turns out that wetlands, which beavers are capable of creating very effectively, are a tremendous carbon storage zone,” she told the Capital Chronicle.
Wetland soil can store up to 10 times more carbon than the same amount of forest soil, and up to 35 times more than grassland, the letter said. Carbon in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels is the primary driver of climate change, and scientists say we have to both reduce our emissions and pull more carbon out of the atmosphere to stabilize the climate.
Bronstein points out that beaver trapping is only one use that actively competes with the other services that wetlands with beavers can provide. In Oregon, fewer than 200 people actively trap and hunt beavers to sell their fur or because some landowners consider them pests. Others hunt them recreationally. “Public lands belong to all Americans, and wildlife is in our collective trust,” says Bronstein. “We want our public lands to provide the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people.
From your fingers to Biden’s ears, here’s hoping that this message gets carried outside Oregon soon.
This is unbelievable. It’s been days since there was a significant beaver news story and this morning there are two stories of exact opposite dramatic weight. Neither one can wait until tomorrow. There’s no alternative, you must hear about BOTH of them. The best of times and the worst of times. The zenith and the nadir. The story we’ve all been waiting for and the story that we’ve never expected to read.
My only love sprung from my only hate, said Juliet. I can’t do a split screen but let’s just look at the headlines side by side, shall we?
Lest you think I exaggerate YES that headline says President Biden and YES that other headline is from The FRIGGIN’ WILDLIFE SOCIETY. So you can see my dilemma. Let’s start with the good news. It will give us strength for the other part.
Yesterday, this letter was delivered to President Biden requesting an executive order protecting beaver on federally managed public lands. “In order to fully realize the wide array of social, ecological, and economic benefits that beavers provide to human and wild communities, the federal government must take bold and decisive action,” said Adam Bronstein of Western Watersheds Project. “This executive order would provide clear direction and is needed because state wildlife agencies are too narrowly focused on the interest of hunters and trappers, leading to their continued failure to protect this critical keystone species. Anxieties are high and cut across state boundaries and addressing them requires a national strategy rather than a piecemeal approach.”
Why are beavers so important? Beavers and — the habitats they create — sequester vast amounts of carbon, provide vital habitat for fish and wildlife, create natural firebreaks, filter drinking water, store water during drought and temper flooding events. When beavers are removed from the landscape, these important benefits are lost. Beavers nearly went extinct in North America after centuries of fur trapping and extermination efforts and their populations have yet to recover across most areas of the United States. Protecting beavers by closing public lands to beaver trapping and hunting will vastly improve survival rates.
Suzanne Fouty wrote me weeks ago about this being in the works and Worth A Dam is a signatory to the letter but it’s nice to see the headline. The attached letter is a wonderful read and the signatories below are like a who’s who in the beaver world. Of course you know me, I wish it said something about killing beavers for other reasons like blockign culverts, but it’s a start and we all have our own fish to fry.
“Beavers are a keystone species, meaning that they play a crucial role in maintaining the biodiversity and stability of ecosystems,” adds Dr. William Ripple, Distinguished Professor of Ecology at Oregon State University. “Beavers have been referred to as ‘nature’s firefighters’ due to their ability to create wetland habitats that can act as natural firebreaks, slowing or even stopping the spread of wildfires.”
And as weather becomes increasingly unpredictable and severe and the economic, ecological, and emotional costs rise, we need all the help we can get. Long-time environmental advocate and singer/songwriter Carole King summed up the reality of the situation, “No matter how far downstream we live, beavers and their dams are beneficial to all of us because they create wetlands, mitigate drought and flooding, and filter pollutants from our rivers and streams.”
Nicely said. Beavers do a lot of things for the country that you say you want done. So lets not kill them. Except of course for in Michigan and Wisconsin where they degrade habitat and pollute our streams. How’s the whiplash coming along? This is from article II:
Beaver dams are a major cause of habitat degradation in the streams that drain into Lake Superior, Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. While beaver ponds can be beneficial to some species of wildlife, obstructions on these small tributaries can negatively impact critical habitat for migrating fish, including brook trout, particularly during spawning season. A single obstruction has the potential to impact fish passage over miles of the stream and can disrupt gravel stream bottoms necessary for successful spawning, decrease stream flow causing lower oxygen levels and negatively increase water temperature.
We expect malarkey like this from USDA. I mean goodness what else are they likely to do. But to read this report in THE WILDLIFE SOCIETY? Honest TWS has done some of the best and earliest beaver education in the country. In fact way back when the Martinez beavers were in danger I remember one of my most hopeful moments was when fellow committee member Igor Skaredoff attended a TWS beaver conference in Oregon. I expect better from them. Good lord.
Wildlife Services coordinated with the Michigan and Wisconsin departments of natural resources to identify stream locations that represented traditional coaster brook trout habitat. Staff then surveyed designated streams on foot, watercraft and fixed-wing aircraft to identify stream barriers. After locating beaver activity and dams through surveying, barriers were removed using a combination of hand pulling and explosives.
From 2018 to 2021, where the goal was to protect areas of coastal wetland and other habitats in Michigan, Wildlife Services staff monitored targeted areas along 19 streams, surveying approximately 200 acres and removing 120 beaver dams. During the same timeframe, Wildlife Services staff in Wisconsin worked to maintain stream connectivity established for aquatic species. Wisconsin Wildlife Services staff monitored targeted areas along 32 streams, spanning just over 300 miles, and removed a total of 225 beaver dams.
We are living in times of feast and times of famine. The best of times and the worst of times. The beaver renaissance and the beaver dark ages. It ain’t over until it’s over, Your help is still need.
Stay vigilant.
Last night I heard from retired USDA hydrologist Suzanne Fouty that she was working with Adam Bronstein of Western Watersheds Project on the final touches of a letter to president Biden asking him to officially prevent beaver trapping on federal public lands as part of the climate change and biodiversity crisis response. They need support from non profits and professionals to sign on. You can read the letter here, and sign on below.
Dear Potential Signatories,
A coalition of non-profit organizations, scientists and concerned citizens has drafted this letter (also attached to this email) to President Biden asking his administration to issue an executive order banning hunting and trapping of beaver (with limited exceptions) on federally-managed public lands as an emergency climate change response.
Beavers are ecosystem engineers that create rich wetlands offering us an important nature-based remedy for carbon drawdown. In addition to climate benefits, beaver dams and meadows provide vital ecosystem services such as water storage and filtration, natural firebreaks, and fish and wildlife habitat.
State fish and game agencies have failed to sufficiently protect beaver across the country. Banning beaver hunting and trapping is the one single factor that we can control to help their populations grow and recover. The urgency of the climate and biodiversity crises now calls for bold action at the executive level of government.
Sign-on Disclaimer: University and agency affiliations will be listed on the letter for informational purposes only to indicate the credentials of the cosigners.
If you represent an organization or are a scientist and would like to sign on to this letter, please fill out the form linked below by 2/17
Please forward this sign-on opportunity with your networks.
Sincerely,
Adam Bronstein
Oregon/Nevada Director
Western Watersheds Project
Suzanne Fouty, PhD
Hydrologist/Soils Specialist
retired USDA Forest Service
You can read the entire well-written letter here and please share with your contacts.
Biden Beaver Letter
