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Related: About this forumHow One Unlikely Rodent Is Saving the American West
...snip
Flat-Tail Climate Hero
Letting beavers do their work is one powerful way to make the land and its creatures resilient in a time of climatological stress. For example, across the planet a wide range of amphibians, including frogs and salamanders, are declining fast, becoming rare or extinct. Their sudden decline may be due to habitat loss, pollution, viruses enabled by a warming climate, or all of the above, but their disappearance is one more measure of the ecological catastrophe now underway. Beavers make wet habitat where amphibians can recover and thrive.
The aquatic insects that bloom in wetlands feed populations of stressed songbirds. Their ponds shelter fingerling fishbeavers are vegetariansand baby ducks. Beavers are ecological servants par excellence who give life to the land. They are not only beneficial agents of biodiversity, however: humans benefit, too.
In Western forests, the beavers stick-in-the-mud architecture spreads, slows, and deepens the flow of water from spring runoff so that it recharges underground aquifers, springs, and seeps. Slowing that runoff means that the streams feeding reservoirs last longer, possibly all summer. Thats important for local agriculture, which depends on irrigation. Beaver dams improve water quality by trapping sediment that filters pollution. A lush-green landscape also inhibits landslides, floods, and fire. So beavers are not only good for the usual crew of endangered species, but also for millions of humans whose drinking water originates in heat-stressed watersheds that could be restored by the beavers hydrological habits.
Considering all the benefits beavers bring with them, why havent we rushed to return them to their keystone role in the Western landscape? The simple answer to a complicated question is one word: cows.
from: http://www.thenation.com/node/180801?page=full
The aquatic insects that bloom in wetlands feed populations of stressed songbirds. Their ponds shelter fingerling fishbeavers are vegetariansand baby ducks. Beavers are ecological servants par excellence who give life to the land. They are not only beneficial agents of biodiversity, however: humans benefit, too.
In Western forests, the beavers stick-in-the-mud architecture spreads, slows, and deepens the flow of water from spring runoff so that it recharges underground aquifers, springs, and seeps. Slowing that runoff means that the streams feeding reservoirs last longer, possibly all summer. Thats important for local agriculture, which depends on irrigation. Beaver dams improve water quality by trapping sediment that filters pollution. A lush-green landscape also inhibits landslides, floods, and fire. So beavers are not only good for the usual crew of endangered species, but also for millions of humans whose drinking water originates in heat-stressed watersheds that could be restored by the beavers hydrological habits.
Considering all the benefits beavers bring with them, why havent we rushed to return them to their keystone role in the Western landscape? The simple answer to a complicated question is one word: cows.
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How One Unlikely Rodent Is Saving the American West (Original Post)
Joe Shlabotnik
Jul 2014
OP
upaloopa
(11,417 posts)1. "Hey nice beaver". "Thanks I just had it stuffed".
Thanks to the Stephanie Miller show.
Nihil
(13,508 posts)2. That is a fascinating article!
Thanks for that!