Nature at work for you – Beavers help fish, wildlife and people
Beavers are industrious engineers, constructing dams and lodges for shelter and food storage. Beavers actively modify streams and surrounding woodlands, improving the health of a watershed by creating lush ponds or wetland habitat for a variety of fish and wildlife. By damming water, beavers create a refuge for juvenile and overwintering fish. These ponds provide homes to aquatic invertebrates (fish food), amphibians, reptiles, waterfowl, songbirds, and mammals.
Benefits of Beavers in a Dry Climate
• By building dams, beavers are able to slow spring runoff, reducing the potential for flooding and erosion.
• Beaver dams spread water onto the floodplain and reconnect side channels allowing for greater water storage.
• Beaver ponds provide a continuous water supply that percolates into the ground, recharging aquifers.
• Beaver ponds trap sediment and filter out toxic materials providing cool, clean water for downstream water users.
A pretty wonderful beaver benefit broadcast from the Mid-Columbia Fisheries Enhancement Group. It even ends with a discussion of beaver conflicts and where to go for resolutions. The Mid-Columbia is centered in the middle of Washington State (beaver mecca, from which all wisdom flows) and has good team members like project manager Melissa Babik who heads the heaver relocation project for Yakima that we read about everywhere last fall. I tend to think a river group does serious restoration when they are divided into head, mid and lower. But check out this map for Regional Fisheries Enhancement Groups in Washington. Created by the voters in 1980 it is no wonder why Washington is so good at managing streams and advocating for beavers.
One thing they don’t have is links to us, Beaver Solutions, The Land Trust, the Grand Canyon trust or Joe Wheaton in Utah, Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife, or Skip Lisle, to name a few. Don’t you think they should? I’ll see what I can do.
And some good cheer from Tundra sent yesterday by Rickipedia and Art Wolinsky….
