There's a really good book about a homesteader that did something similar to this in the 1930's in British Columbia, "Three Against The Wilderness". Basically he restored the dams that had been dynamited by the ranchers, and that restored all of the wetlands in the area.<p>Later on, the government brought him some beavers from elsewhere, and they flourished.
I love this. Especially the part where you can ask the Government of Canada for beavers.<p>But it feels like there’s a bit of surprise to the idea that the environment takes on the form it takes on. And if you take away a part of it, it’ll take on a different form. And if you put that part back, it can take on the earlier form. There is no correct or canonical form.
There are lots of people looking to relocate beavers as their dams flood out roads etc. I can get you about 6 a year
Yeah, what is the right form of nature here - wetlands, or a road for humans. There is likely no cosmic right answer - but personally I believe we have lot's of roads and too little wetlands left.
You want a toe? I can get you a toe.
Send them all my way. I could start a company. A company down by The Bay.
While its true that there are no correct or canonical forms for the environment, there are states with large biodiversity and states with comparatively small biodiversity. Generally we regard the former more valuable than the latter.
I wrote a while back about some coho fry populations I found which would have benefitted tremendously from dams. Each day I returned I would find more and more empty pools along the river, picked clean of fish where I’d previously seen dozens or hundreds of fry. Beavers used to live here in great numbers, but these days it’s fairly uncommon to see them. I bet they saved a lot of coho back in their day.<p><a href="https://steve-adams.me/coho.html" rel="nofollow">https://steve-adams.me/coho.html</a>
It was an interesting, but counterintuitive result that water temperatures went down after artificial beaver damming. Their theory is that the water is able to permeate more into the ground and exchange heat with the ambient underground temperature [1]<p>1. <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/beaver-dams-without-beavers-artificial-logjams-are-popular-controversial-restoration" rel="nofollow">https://www.science.org/content/article/beaver-dams-without-...</a>
I’m rather partial to beavers myself and was sad to learn about their demise in North America. At one point their pelts were referred to as “the coin of the realm” <a href="https://youtu.be/8XToPq9lsOM?si=DJKedkQXuzJhSmf7" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/8XToPq9lsOM?si=DJKedkQXuzJhSmf7</a>
Here's your link without the surveillance: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XToPq9lsOM" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XToPq9lsOM</a><p>I'd recommend Leila Philip's <i>Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America</i>. It's a great work of narrative science writing.<p>I think we deeply underestimate the profound impact beavers had on the landscape in North America. We truly live in a post-beaver geography. The beaver hat fad in Europe was the primary driver of their population going from <i>hundreds of millions</i> to less than 100,000.<p><a href="https://www.leilaphilip.com/beaverland" rel="nofollow">https://www.leilaphilip.com/beaverland</a>
off-topic: I've made a habit of removing all those `si` or `igshid` or `unique_share_id` (thanks airbnb for making it obvious, I guess) and I wish I'd have a "middleware" that removes them when I copy something, but I'm too lazy and it would not be cross-platform.<p>some apps have gotten sneaky though and made every shared URL an apparently unique one :/
Yeah the best policy is to avoid using a "Share" button as much as possible and always just copy the URL bar. I have a browser extension that strips them automatically too but I don't think it always works. I wish my extension, instead of just stripping it, would mangle it randomly just to add some data poisoning to websites that do this
Maybe I missed it, why didn't they just reintroduce beavers?
The beavers are still there, just not in high numbers like they used to be. Right now the ecosystem can only support the population that is already there. Maybe eventually it will support more and then the number will increase naturally.
TFA implies the issue is land owners won’t allow it:<p>> <i>But beavers can only thrive if landowners allow them to.</i>
Which they never will on their own, so surely conservation regulations need to be enforced, too bad the US is moving backwards right now in that regard
Beavers can be incredibly difficult to live alongside of.<p>My parents have 100+ acres of bush in central Alberta. When they bought the property it was logged out and mostly in a bad abused state and mostly dry. Over a few years, beavers moved in and transformed a formerly semi-marshy spot into a full pond. And then another. And another.<p>Eventually though, without a lot of predators around (there's some skittish bears, coyotes, that's it) they begin to overpopulate. And any efforts to keep the water level at a certain point starts to get tricky. In order to keep access to some parts of the property my dad ended up having to put in some sneaky culverts with various tricks to stop them from plugging them. (I forget, but he eventually figured out a beaverproof trick).<p>Even then, every few years the need to "remove" some of the beavers, because they just get to be too many, they run out of poplars near their lodge and start to cause more problems for downstream and upstream neighbours.<p>They've done amazing things for the property. But when my parents pass it's going to be hard to maintain this property with the beavers actively trying to transform it constantly.
Throw in some wolves and create a brand new set of problems :)
what's wrong with it not reverting to nature when they pass? people put flowers on loved ones graves.
What are the problems actually? That they have improved water retention and soil hydration?
They will continue to breed, expanding territory unless there are predators. When they come across a culvert (or bridge), they will block it, eventually overtopping roads and washing them out.
> They will continue to breed, expanding territory unless there are predators.<p>Just like our fellow humans. Godzilla to the rescue!
Is there no more demand for beaver pelt and/or meat?<p>I've heard the tail is particularly tasty and easy to skin and cook.
Thanks for the good faith reply. I can see that this would require regular maintenance.<p>It is interesting that we see our infrastructure as 'valid' or correct, but the work these engineers (beavers) put in as a nuisance. In an ideal world, the benefits to local biodiversity and ecosystem health should be balanced with the cost of relocating roads when necessary.
> They will continue to breed, expanding territory unless there are predators<p>Maybe part of the problem is that humans in North America are largely not hunting beavers anymore?<p>We're very capable of being the predators that keep animal populations in check, and plenty of people do still hunt, but I don't think I've ever heard of anyone hunting beavers in my life
Busy beaver problem?
Why are you wanting transform the beavers property?
this is basically the inciting incident of the recent movie <i>Hoppers</i>
Because the government makes the water that comes with them a huge liability.<p>Tons of vacant land owners would be happy to allow beavers and everything else if not for the fact that it destroys any prospect of doing anything on the land.
His freeform, not-too-serious libertarianism can easily be mocked, but PJ O’Rourke did have a very good point about well-intentioned but counterproductive environmental legislation like the laws governing wetlands: imagine that, should an Old Master painting be discovered on your property, you were required immediately to cease all other use of the property and protect that Old Master painting against damage or theft, under penalty of law, but <i>without</i> any compensation for the expenses this might incur. You can imagine that any new ones found would simply be burned immediately, not protected. And wetlands laws work a bit like that.
> Maybe I missed it, why didn't they just reintroduce beavers?<p>My guess is that trees are not there in numbers enough to support beavers. Or maybe they don't want beavers chopping the trees.
Whatever they eat, did that go down to an all time low. Im m curious about the chain reaction vs an isolated result.
That was my thought too. Nothing in an ecosystem exists in isolation. Change a single variable, especially a dramatic change like going from 8% to 60% on a single variable, and there will be ripple effects throughout the local ecosystem. The Law of Unintended Consequences is one of those unchangeable, eternal laws that when you forget them, the Gods of the Copybook Headings limp up to explain it once more*.<p>* <a href="https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_copybook.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_copybook.htm</a> for anyone who doesn't recognize the reference in that last sentence. Most people will, I hope, but there's always the lucky 10,000. (<a href="https://xkcd.com/1053/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/1053/</a>)
With freshwater increasingly being a problem, being able to slow down tributaries and allow the water to percolate and help rebuild aquifers is something that should be happening everywhere possible.<p>Lost cost, high reward. Not sexy enough to get the attention it deserves.
I really want this to mean dams constructed by robot beavers. Move over, A.I.! Time for A.B.
The temperature is cooler? That can't possibly be the only reason to explain such a dramatic change in survival rates. We definitely need more research on this topic.
There's more food, less energy wasted fighting excessively strong current, and more places to hide from predators. Water quality goes up downstream of a beaver(-ish) dam.
If you do even a moment of reading about salmon, you will find that they are extremely sensitive to warm temperatures. Even a couple degrees F above their "normal" will allow disease to run rampant.
I am sick of underachieving beavers. Go us! Seriously, that would require statutory change here in Washington state. I live in a rural area with salmon waterways all over. Farmers just quietly clear the way for them, because it's illegal to make any changes to the waterway even if it's trash thrown out of cars.
we clearly need to design better salmon.