Even Colorado's Largest Wildfire Was No Match For Beavers

[Jilly_in_VA]

Deep in the Cameron Peak burn scar, nestled among charred hills, there’s an oasis of green — an idyllic patch of trickling streams that wind through a lush grass field. Apart from a few scorched branches on the periphery, it’s hard to tell that this particular spot was in the middle of Colorado’s largest-ever wildfire just a year ago.

This wetland was spared thanks to the work of beavers.

The mammals, quite famously, dam up streams to make ponds and a sprawling network of channels. Beavers are clumsy on land, but talented swimmers; so the web of pools and canals lets them find safety anywhere within the meadow.

On a recent visit to that patch of preserved land in Poudre Canyon, ecohydrologist Emily Fairfax emphasized the size of the beavers’ canal network.

“Oh my gosh, I can’t even count them,” she said. “It’s a lot. There’s at least 10 ponds up here that are large enough to see in satellite images. And then between all those ponds is just an absolute spiderweb of canals, many of which are too small for me to see until I’m here on the ground.”

https://www.kunc.org/environment/2021-09-23/even-colorados-largest-wildfire-was-no-match-for-beavers

[calimary]

1. LOVE IT! Let nature take its course.

[Bayard]

2. Busy little beavers

Just going about their business, and helping to save the land.

[paleotn]

3. Fighting forest fires for the last 24 million years.

Beavers and their close kin.

[mbusby]

4. Beaver Who Loves the Bathtub Gets His Very Own Pond...

[MsLeopard]

6. Love it!!

His name is Justin Beaver! ROLF!

[Harker]

7. Bieber is Deutsch for Beaver.

I smile a little on those rare occasions that his name comes up.

[DENVERPOPS]

5. I wonder

about the beaver that made these ponds......did they make it????

We go up to the mountains every weekend to a remote place very near where two of the major fires happened last fall here in Colorado.
The first thing we noticed on our first trip was an absence of the normal wildlife we were used to having around our camp.
In particular, the smaller critters, zero mice, zero rabbits, and zero chipmunks. We were used to being over run by them in the past years. We have caught a few bigger animals on game cameras, but not near as many as past years.

Our friends cabin was leveled in the Conflagration that occured in Grand and Larimer county. From six one evening, until six the next morning, it went through Grand, went up and over the continental divide, down the other side and headed for Estes park.
In just TWELVE HOURS it consumed 34 square miles of forest, fanned by 50 knot winds. A true conflagration.
I am saddened about all the people who lost their homes and cabins, but also about the amount of wildlife that couldn't outrun the nightmare that happened to them that night.......

[Farmer-Rick]

8. I have a wet area at the bottom of my hill/mountain with a stream running through it.

I always thought it would be a perfect place for a beaver. There may have been one or a group of them years ago. There is evidence of piled up logs, sticks and a dried out pond. But no beavers as far as I can tell

There are muskrats but they are so much smaller and less noticable.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

9. That oasis will seed the forest all around it and that green will spread far and wide. . . . nt