Can it be? Are we getting TWO DAYS of beaver good news IN A ROW? I think we are. We might get more than that. I mean anything is possible. Actual rain came from the actual sky all last night and this morning so we know anything is possible.

Beavers Chip in on Landscape Engineering

Beavers are among the best ecosystem engineers. Their mighty chompers make quick work of trees, and the resulting logs dam up moving water to create swampy ponds. These changes to the landscape can open up important new habitats for all kinds of species, from amphibians to moose, within the beavers’ native range in North America.

“They are unique in this regard, in the ability to modify their habitat,” says Steve Windels, a wildlife biologist who studies beavers at Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota. They are second only to humans in their ability to completely change an ecosystem, he adds.

Beavers are such great engineers, in fact, that some wildlife and landscape managers are putting the rodents to work restoring wetlands and creating dams more efficiently than even human engineers. We’re also gaining a better appreciation of their ability to create habitats important for not only wildlife, but also human-made constructions such as fisheries and water management facilities. For example, they can control the excess flow of chemicals in some waterways — and recent research shows that beaver-created ponds are more resistant to wildfires.

Wonderful to hear beaver virtues extolled in Discover Magazine. It’s nice to hear someone from Voyageurs say beavers are good for something besides making a quick wolf snack, anyway.

According to Chis Jordan of NOAA, the ponds that the animals create are an important habitat for endangered salmonids like coho in the Pacific Northwest, where he works. “They can completely control what a floodplain looks like,” he says. “That makes for really rich salmon habitat.”

Slow-moving waterways with plenty of ponds are better for salmon species. There, the young fish have plenty of habitat to grow in before making their way downstream to the open ocean — and it’s easier for the adults to swim upstream to spawn. But human development over the decades has often resulted in the channeling of water into straighter, deeper rivers rather than meandering pathways. These rivers are tough to navigate even for beavers; they just don’t have the skills to dam up fast-flowing rivers.

Jordan has spent a lot of time engineering floodplains to improve salmon runs. In his work, he and his colleagues often try to convince beavers to help out by creating small, artificial dams that slow the flow enough for beavers to move in and take over. “We’re stealing from their toolbox,” he says.

Once the rivers are slowed down, beavers will sometimes move in. “They will short-circuit our process to build dams on our structures,” Jordan says, adding that they might even improve on the structures the humans built, deciding that we’re “off by two meters” and putting their own dam on top of the artificial structure. After they modify faster streams to a suitable flow, the beavers pretty much take over the show.

“Then we walk away, because they have the maintenance contract,” Jordan says. “They’re going to do a way better job because they’re there 24/7.”

Oh okay, sure. Beavers make habitat for salmon and fix rivers and remove toxins but other than that, what good are they? I ask you?

And the work doesn’t only open up habitat for salmon, amphibians and other wildlife. Beaver dams result in more water storage on the landscape — something Jordan notes is increasingly important in parts of the country experiencing water shortage due to climate change and the overuse of water supplies — and help to prevent floods downstream. When melting snow or rainfall causes high fluxes of water upstream, beaver dams and the resulting ponds can buffer the impact by storing that excess water.

Ohhhhhhh,

The city of Gresham, in the suburbs of Portland, Ore., once had a strikingly similar beaver problem. Its stormwater drains were washing too many leaves and debris from the city into the Columbia River, so in 2009 Gresham constructed a 13-acre, multimillion-dollar stormwater treatment facility to trap debris and give it time to decompose in a series of ponds. Everything was going well until beavers moved into the area a few years later.

In the beginning, Jordan says, their extensive network of dams created havoc. The city tried to fight back against the rodents, but beavers are mighty persistent. You can remove individual animals from a problem area, but more will eventually come as they are typically attracted to the same kinds of features in the landscape.

Then, researchers conducted a study on the facility and found that the beavers’ dams weren’t negatively impacting the overall quality of water that ran off into the Columbia River. In fact, they were only improving it — particularly when it came to heavy metal pollutants. Since then, the facility has worked with the beavers instead of against them.

“The water that comes out of it is better quality water than the initial engineering design,” Jordan says. “There are some cool, happy coincidences.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if EVERY city was like Gresham? I mean Martinez and Stockton and San Diego and Mendocino and Eureka had all read this article and heard science friday and REALLY understood that beavers are in their best interest? That problems they might cause can be solved and that taking beavers away hurts everyone who needs water and wildlife and fire protection in the entire state.

I think this is going to be a good week for beavers. Remember this.