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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%

#41

Post by AngryData »

stouset wrote: post #38
AngryData wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't want to deal with swampy land full of beavers, don't buy swampy land full of beavers. They should of done a better job purchasing land.

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 becom…

You act like it is impossible to use land that beavers live on without destroying the beaver dams or removing the beavers, and yet there are plenty of people that do that very thing their entire lives without a problem.

I didn't say they can't do anything with their land, but if you live on land with beavers you should know how beavers and beaver dams work so you don't do something stupid, like building a structure in the flood path of a stream or river full of beavers, or killing the beavers so that you can and then complaining about the beavers coming back.

Complaining about how beavers work and what beavers are doing on your land is the same as building on a historic floodplain and then complaining about it flooding. Or building in hurricane territory and complaining about hurricanes. Or building in the woods and complaining about deer eating your plants and trees falling on your driveway. One person's lack of foresight is not and should not be everybody and everything else's problem.

Do your research before you buy things. Only an asshole buys and/or builds next to an area with long established feature X and then complains about feature X existing and how its "unfair" they can't have it taken down or destroyed at will.

Re: Artificial beaver dams saw juvenile coho salmon survival rates go from 8% to 60%

#42

Post by arthurbrown »

jpollock wrote: post #35
arthurbrown wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Artificial beaver dams saw juvenile coho salmon survival rates go from 8% to 60%

#43

Post by cucumber3732842 »

oatmeal1 wrote: post #32
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Des…

High density development leaving as much pristine nature as possible is vastly superior to sprawl for the environment, but the comment you replied to didn't seem to describe a density issue.

Regardless we'd do a lot more pinprick development and develop fewer acres and there'd be less pressure to do greenfield development if not for the rules adopted at the behest of half baked 20th century environmentalism.

Re: Artificial beaver dams saw juvenile coho salmon survival rates go from 8% to 60%

#44

Post by cucumber3732842 »

thunderfork wrote: post #39
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Des…

environmentalists well-known for instituting fire lane policies

Just another flavor of short sighted do gooders.

Re: Artificial beaver dams saw juvenile coho salmon survival rates go from 8% to 60%

#45

Post by devilbunny »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #24
cornstalks wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TFA implies the issue is land owners won’t allow it: > But beavers can only thrive if landowners allow them to.

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.

Re: Artificial beaver dams saw juvenile coho salmon survival rates go from 8% to 60%

#46

Post by stouset »

AngryData wrote: post #41
stouset wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 becom…

You act like it is impossible to use land that beavers live on without destroying the beaver dams or removing the beavers, and yet there are plenty of people that do that very thing their entire lives without a problem. I didn't say they can't do anything with their land, but if you live on land with beavers you should know how beavers and beaver dams work so you don't do something stupid, like building a structure i…

No, but I do believe that the people who actually own these lands almost universally think that the government unnecessarily interferes with their ability to make small improvements that don’t meaningfully impact wildlife.

I agree with this kind of oversight. But as someone with a friend who is both an environmentalist and does own land adjacent to a river and land managed by the national forest service, the latitude for what you can actually do without serious oversight is essentially nothing. Luckily what he wants to do is essentially nothing, but even the very minimal bits he does want to do—which includes making fire breaks in a populated area which is wildfire-prone—is questionable.

It’s been eye opening to see the lengths he’s had to go to in order to stay on the right side of things. And it’s given me a decent perspective on the burden it puts on even those who want do to be responsible landowners.

It’s also been interesting to learn about the perverse incentives it does put on those who own this kind of land. One example is that new paths generally can’t be cleared, except when a wildfire happens, if you can justify it as part of firefighting or fire prevention efforts. So if and when there is a fire nearby, bulldozers come out in droves. I’ll leave you to connect that to what might be the root cause of some of these fires.

Re: Artificial beaver dams saw juvenile coho salmon survival rates go from 8% to 60%

#47

Post by giardini »

jpollock wrote: post #35
arthurbrown wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Artificial beaver dams saw juvenile coho salmon survival rates go from 8% to 60%

#48

Post by Waterluvian »

_whiteCaps_ wrote: post #20

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.

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