While it may seem like an iffy idea to introduce a species to an area that it previously did not inhabit, researchers have explained that prior to the rise of beaver hunting and trapping, the animals were ever present, meaning that reintroducing beavers is simply bringing population levels back to their normal.

“Prior to beaver trapping, beaver dams were just about everywhere in the West,” Wally Macfarlane, a researcher at Utah State University who co-developed the Beaver Restoration Assessment Tool, said in a NASA report. “So what we’re attempting to do is to bring beaver dam densities back to historic levels where possible. In doing so, we’re building important drought resiliency and restoring stream areas. I think there’s a lot of foresight by NASA realizing how these things connect.”

In addition to adding drought resiliency and increased biodiversity, the beavers have had the effect of helping to guard against wildfires. In one area where beavers were reintroduced, a 2018 wildfire left the parts where the beavers had settled untouched, Yale Environment 360 reported.

Shocking! Not only do beavers do good things they also used to do them all over the united states. Gosh we must have really screwed things up when we killed them all.