6 Scary Facts About California’s Drought
6 Scary Facts About California’s Drought. Last year was California’s driest on record for much of the state, and this year, conditions are only worsening. Sixty-three percent of the state is in extreme drought, and Sierra Nevada snow pack is now running at just 10 to 30 percent of normal. “We’re heading into what is near the lowest three year period in the instrumental record” for snow pack, says hydrologist Roger Bales of the University of California-Merced.
California’s governor has declared an official state of drought, and there is an alarming discussion about the event becoming the new normal in our state. Will this be the factor that reintroduces beavers to our conversation? I wrote the State secretary of Natural Resources this weekend. As he grew up in Vallejo, I feel there’s a thin chance he might know the something about the story of the Martinez Beavers and someone on his staff will respond. I also commented about the idea on this article at Mother Jones and someone wrote back directing me to read Eric Collier’s “Three against the wilderness” which is about the best I can hope for.
Meanwhile I woke up to discover this from our very good friend Louise Ramsay in Scotland.
Time to bring back Nature’s flood management engineer – the beaver
By Louise Ramsay
As climate change brings more rain, Britain is suffering from the extinction here of our native flood engineer – the beaver. Louise Ramsay says it’s high time to re-introduce these charismatic rodents all over Britain.
There used to be a creature in Britain which helped significantly with this effort. It was made extinct here around four centuries ago, but recent reintroductions of this rodent have shown the vital role they once had in reducing flooding – and how they could take up that mantle once more.
In spite of their reputation for causing floods, beavers also have the capacity for mitigating the impact of flooding, but on a rather bigger scale. In times of heavy rain or sudden snow melt, the water rushing down from the highlands would be slowed up and absorbed more effectively by the large ponds, wetlands and streams with flights of beaver dams, than by deep cut ditches designed to channel water as fast as possible on to the next place.
Louise Ramsay remains one of the most inspirational women on the planet. Her keynote address at the last beaver conference was one of my favorite things EVER. And I am enormously pleased that she’s hard at work on the beaver front in Scotland. In case you need a reminder about her and Paul’s amazing story, here’s my interview with Paul on the subject of the free beavers of the River Tay. It contains an interview with her from the BBC.
Paul Ramsay (Save the Free Beavers of the River Tay)
Louise ended her wonderful presentation at the conference with a passage from the 19th century poet Gerald Manly Hopkins from his work ‘Inversnaid‘. I remarked at the time it could not have been better chosen or better delivered.
What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
