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” https://youtu.be/8XToPq9lsOM?si=DJKedkQXuzJhSmf7
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.
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.
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.
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]
1. https://www.science.org/content/article/beaver-dams-without-...
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:
> But beavers can only thrive if landowners allow them to.
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
Then you get people (understandably) upset that just about any work they want to do to improve their own private land needs to involve the EPA and/or a local wildlife commission.
The two meanings are not synonymous. One can certainly destroy land through improving or developing it, one can also do improve it responsibly and minimally.
Building one or two small permanent structures on many acres of forest is not destroying it by a long shot.
Everything you do to waste land area by "lightly" touching it further increases sprawl because it increases the land required to do things.
Environmentalism is in direct conflict with densely packing "stuff" onto land whether that's people or industry. If you want to preserve nature embrace the "concrete jungle" and the density it brings.
Look at historical small towns vs modern build outs of the same population. Despite building maybe four stories high at most 50k people in some New England or Midwest mill town fit on a tiny fraction of the developed area of the same modern population simply because environmentalists weren't around to mandate engineered drainage ditches and green spaces and setbacks and require every podunk business have fire lanes a drunk could back a lowboy into and all planters in their parking lot and the other stuff
The alternative is we drive ourselves ever closer to the brink.
It is entirely possible that our current way of living, including the idea of “private land” as it exists today, may not be conducive to our long-term survival.
The forces of nature care not for our political and philosophical debates.
This is the opposite of a useful perspective.
Someone, definitionally, owns all the privately held land in the US. Large landowners in rural areas are on average more politically connected and wield more political power in their communities.
Telling them that any sort of work on their own land—no matter how small—requires extensive oversight might be well-intentioned but pisses off a lot of people who will then become bitter opponents of even well-designed environmental legislation. Telling them they should have made better purchasing decisions just motivates them even further.
What actually ends up happening is these people then do it anyway with zero oversight, because the amount of land involved is too vast to enforce these things on. You also get large concerted efforts to overturn any and all environmental protection.
Unfortunately it seems like considering the cost to those around you is becoming a dying art
Good? They don't own the commons.
Beavers can be incredibly difficult to live alongside of.
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.
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).
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.
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 :)
That's the beauty of it. When wintertime rolls around they simply freeze to death.
What are the problems actually? That they have improved water retention and soil hydration?
Is there no more demand for beaver pelt and/or meat?
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.
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.
what's wrong with it not reverting to nature when they pass? people put flowers on loved ones graves.
Busy beaver problem?
Why are you wanting transform the beavers property?
this is basically the inciting incident of the recent movie Hoppers
Because the government makes the water that comes with them a huge liability.
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 without 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?
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.
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.
> I am sick of underachieving beavers. Go us!
This really made laugh for some reason, just imagining a beaver typing away at HN specifically.
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.
Lost cost, high reward. Not sexy enough to get the attention it deserves.
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 give the salmon a little more credit because the entire river can't be a beaver dam. That's their theory and I think will more research we're going to learn more about what's happening here.
we clearly need to design better salmon.