the dam for free? Or something like that. There has been a strain of articles recently about the role that little dams have in helping wintering salmonids. (Fish of the family Salmonidae, including salmon, trout, chars, whitefish, ciscoes and grayling) The begrudging recognition is that beavers might be helpful in keeping little amounts of dammed water for these important fish. No one sounds very happy about it. It’s has been greeted with all the enthusiasm that eating broccoli can reduce your risk of colon cancer.
Recently I’ve been exchanging emails with Brock Dolman, who is the director of the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center Water Institute and has been very involved with watershed and environmental education. They are the group responsible for the “Bioneers” conferences, which we talked about in the past and which at least one beaver supporter attended. Amidst their lovely grounds you can take courses in watershed restoration or learn how to garden organically. Brock has become excited about the research linking beavers to salmon, and connected with Gordon Leppig a Staff Environmental Scientist of the Northern division of the California Deparment of Fish & Game. Together the two of them are working on a massive literature review of the relationship between beavers and salmon.
Now getting Fish & Game to think about beavers as anything other than a reason to issue a permit to trap is a big deal. So already I’m excited. Yesterday he sent me an email from a friend with whom he’d been discussing this idea and who responded, “well if dams are good for salmon, lets just dress up in beaver costumes and build some.” This proposal was hailed as avoiding beaver-driven complications such as trees and flooding and permits to trap.
Hey, maybe its just me, but you know what else is really good at dressing up in beaver costumes and buildling beaver dams? BEAVERS. They are excellent at it and their costumes are very convincing. You can wrap important trees to discourage chewing. You can install flow devices if dams get too high and block with trapezoidal fencing of culverts get blocked. You can rely on coppicing to replace the bushy willow growth that comes back making better habitat for nests. And you won’t need to have a potluck every time you get the volunteers together to make repairs.
The beavers will be on site 24/7 and do the work for free.
Still. Beavers=Salmon. Let’s all repeat that. Solidly advertising the relationship between beavers and salmon is going to be the single best thing we can do to help beavers. I told Brock I’d help in any way I could, and gave him the information we’d gathered so far. If there are 5 people in the state who care about beavers, there are 5000 who care about salmon. There are salmon lobbyists. And someday, if we do our job well enough, and support the science strongly enough, and spread the word far enough, they’ll be beaver lobbyists too.
How about a “Salmon Tax” that a city or industry would need to pay for altering their watershed including removing their beavers? That might encourage them to stop and think about which is more expensive?
There’s still time to vote:
