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.
Artificial beaver dams saw juvenile coho salmon survival rates go from 8% to 60%
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Re: Artificial beaver dams saw juvenile coho salmon survival rates go from 8% to 60%
#12With 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.
Re: Artificial beaver dams saw juvenile coho salmon survival rates go from 8% to 60%
#13Maybe I missed it, why didn't they just reintroduce beavers?
TFA implies the issue is land owners won’t allow it: > But beavers can only thrive if landowners allow them to.
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.
Re: Artificial beaver dams saw juvenile coho salmon survival rates go from 8% to 60%
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 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.
Re: Artificial beaver dams saw juvenile coho salmon survival rates go from 8% to 60%
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
TFA implies the issue is land owners won’t allow it: > But beavers can only thrive if landowners allow them to.
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,…
Busy beaver problem?
Re: Artificial beaver dams saw juvenile coho salmon survival rates go from 8% to 60%
#16The 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.
Re: Artificial beaver dams saw juvenile coho salmon survival rates go from 8% to 60%
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Ignoring externalities remains popular. We live in a society. I can’t build a helipad on my roof in the middle of Seattle. Technically that’s a limitation on my personal liberty. We accept it because of the cost to the people around me.
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Re: Artificial beaver dams saw juvenile coho salmon survival rates go from 8% to 60%
#18Whatever they eat, did that go down to an all time low. Im m curious about the chain reaction vs an isolated result.
Re: Artificial beaver dams saw juvenile coho salmon survival rates go from 8% to 60%
#19I 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.
Re: Artificial beaver dams saw juvenile coho salmon survival rates go from 8% to 60%
#20There'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.