Everyone knows that beavers are good for trout. Everyone, that is except to stubborn states that have insisted for years that beaver dams can be removed so that precious trout can survive. They’ve even gone so far as to say there are MORE beavers now than before the trappers came, and that’s why the trout population is so badly damaged.
Well look what just got published in the LaCrosse Tribune. As in LaCrosse Wisconsin!!!
Jay Thurston: Beavers provide for better trout fishing
Recently I finished reading the book titled, “Eager Beavers Matter,” written by Ben Goldfarb, in 2018. Many years ago I caught a 17-nch brook trout behind a beaver dam. Years later I caught a 25 inch brown trout behind another beaver dam. I was aware of the good food for trout behind beaver dams that was mentioned in Trout, publication from Trout Unlimited, about two year ago. If you have a beaver dam that is there for at least three years you could find big trout behind the dam.
WOW! Hear that, Wisconsin? And if you rip out that beaver dam its very likely that you won’t have a big trout behind it. Jay! You are doing the heroes work of preaching beaver gospel where it is needed most.
Considering fish food as the writer of “Eager Beavers Matter,” wrote, “Beavers make fish food. Beaver ponds containing up to five times more invertebrates than open channels, an almost unfathomable seventy three thousand bugs per square meter. And while fish folks sometimes complain that silty pond floors make lousy breeding habitat for salmon and trout, which prefer rocky bottoms, every particle that gets trapped by a beaver is a particle that won’t smother spawning gravel downstream.”
Have you thanked Ben Golfarb lately for writing the most wonderful book in the world? I am SO grateful that his wonderful words are rolling around the hard soil of public opinion and seeping into the minds of people who thought they knew better!
Beavers add to our groundwater that is sadly missing in many parts of the nation. From, “Eager Beavers Matter,” “Farmers above the Ogallala aquifer, the formation that underlies much of the Midwest, have pumped their aquifer with such exuberance that in some spots only a few decades of water remain. In California’s Central Valley, the nation’s produce aisle, water users slurped up forty-one trillion gallons of groundwater between 1920 and 2013 – one third the volume of Lake Erie. In the 1970’s when of pumping reached its furious apex, some farmland sank 30 feet as dewatered soil subsided, costing the state a billion dollars. Aquifers are often likened to saving accounts. Withdraw more than you make in interest, and pretty soon you’re eating into your principle. Then you’re broke.”
As our planet warms beavers have followed and recently build dams where trees appeared in Alaska. The dams provide food for moose, songbirds, and other species to adapt to global warming.
Jay goes on to talk about that fantastic article from Chris Wood the CEO of Trout Unlimited.
“When Trout Unlimited evaluated the effects of this type of conservation grazing and beaver at larger scales, across several Great Basin watersheds including Susie Creek, the increased wet streamside habitat was equivalent to the effects of adding 10 inches of annual precipitation. That’s nearly double the current precipitation at some sites, a big deal in this semi-arid desert.”
Wood concludes his article with, “The more water retained in the streams, the more drought and fire resistant the land around it becomes, plain and simple.”
When beavers build dams the trout behind the dams are the largest in the stream.
What a fantastic article! From EXACTLY the place it needs to be delivered and exactly the writer it needs to deliver it. Oh can you feel it? The earth is moving under our feet and starting to catch up with beavers.
It’s a new day.
