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

discoverwildlife.com

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

#71

Post by pvaldes »

lukan wrote: post #64
usedtobegood wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of people looking to relocate beavers as their dams flood out roads etc. I can get you about 6 a year

Yeah, what is the right form of nature here - wetlands, or a road for humans. There is likely no cosmic right answer - but personally I believe we have lot's of roads and too little wetlands left.

I will chose to make a bridge or detour a road once via collective effort, over rebuilding the entire burnt village every ten years. Beaver territories stop wildfires, and they take care of the forever maintenance of the firewalls for free, releasing tax money that can be spent in better things.

They also provide an invaluable service slowing floods, creating fisheries for humans, and increasing touristic appeal from a location (we are naturally attracted by the aesthetics of watching water). Ponds also create relatively safe sanctuaries where wildlife, cattle and humans can retreat in case of wildfires.

So, yes, there are many cons, but also many pros. Beavers compete with us for low places and shouldn't be allowed everywhere, but to eliminate them from every place is also a mistake.

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

#72

Post by bell-cot »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #65

I wrote a while back about some coho fry populations I found which would have benefitted tremendously from dams. Each day I returned I would find more and more empty pools along the river, picked clean of fish where I’d previously seen dozens or hundreds of fry. Beavers used to live here in great numbers, but these days it’s fairly uncommon to see them. I bet they saved a lot of coho back in their day. https://steve-…

Thank you for posting this.

And also for your simple, matter-of-fact tone.

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

#73

Post by Cthulhu_ »

PetitPrince wrote: post #69

My youtube feed gets a decent amount of recommendation from channels such as Mossy Earth, Plant Wild, etc. that showcase some nature restauration project. While I cannot help myself to be a bit skeptical of those efforts (how really sustainable is all of this; isn't that just a tiny drop in the ocean, etc.), I really like to have positive and hopeful news like the one of this article amidst all the ambient negativity…

The way I see it, yeah it's a drop in the ocean, but these individual sites will act as "seeds", safe havens for wildlife that, from there, can spread out far and wide. Like these fish, they don't stay there, they go far and wide and become part of a much bigger ecosystem. Part of the reason why these restoration projects are important is because at the time, people weren't aware (or didn't care) of the scale or impact their efforts in hunting beavers had. I'm sure the individual hunters also figured their hunting was a drop in the ocean.

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

#74

Post by Cthulhu_ »

richiebful1 wrote: post #10

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-...

Armchair theory: larger water surface from beaver lakes means larger evaporative surface means things cool down. Depends on the ambient temperature and amount of sunlight as well, of course.

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

#75

Post by Cthulhu_ »

pstuart wrote: post #12

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.

Loads of projects being done for that (at least in Europe) after droughts have become more and more common. Netherlands especially, worldwide experts in water management because for hundreds of years they tried to actually get rid of the water; the whole country is full of infrastructure for managing the water table.

This year was bad in terms of drought, yet it seems it wasn't as bad as the one we had a few years ago (2018 or 19? I don't remember exactly) because they allowed the water table to go higher a bit, used the ijsselmeer as a giant fresh water reservoir, closed / limited locks, etc. After this year and the rapidly accellerating / worsening effects of climate change, like the drying out (ok, low water levels) of the Rhine, I'm sure they're working hard to do more. They can for example choose to allow the flood plains to flood even when there's no flooding, to (locally) add to the ground water. Granted, it takes (iirc) decades or hundreds of years for that to end up in the aquifers but better now than never.

Other projects I've heard of involve allowing rivers and streams to meander again, undoing the work of straightening them to get rid of water faster and / or optimize shipping traffic.

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

#76

Post by Cthulhu_ »

xp84 wrote: post #51

I really want this to mean dams constructed by robot beavers. Move over, A.I.! Time for A.B.

I just... don't like comments like these; it's so much cheaper, easier and better to either have humans build one (out of biodegradeable materials like in the article) or reintroduce beavers. But instead of allocating some money for that, people allocate millions/billions to build robots that can't do the job as well.

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

#77

Post by seobotaicom »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #67
josefresco wrote: post #2

Maybe I missed it, why didn't they just reintroduce beavers?

They are doing that in a few places in the UK. It's working really well and they can rapidly transform the landscapes they are in. The flip side of course is that a lot of residential areas and farmland is in what used to be wetlands that are now drained on purpose. If you introduce beavers there, it tends to be a bit disruptive as they would cause issues with flooding areas that people would prefer to keep dry. But…

Wouldn’t reintroducing beavers be cheaper in the long run if the main problem is maintaining the artificial dams?

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

#79

Post by zeristor »

Nice.

But beaver dams also capture sediment, one of the problems is that rain on loose soil forms deepening gullies.

Another big part is the wetlands, which helps water refill aquifers if the soil is permeable. And a charged aquifer provides springs.

I have no idea why I am so obsessed by aquifer recharge.

There’s a fair number of greening the desert YouTube channels using Beaver Dam analogues funded by the state.

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

#80

Post by lbriner »

petcat wrote: post #4
josefresco wrote: post #2

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.

It is not so much the eco-system, it is the need for a full food-chain of animals to keep populations in-check. We like deer but without wolves or large cats, the deer become a pest but we don't like wolves and large cats because we are all taught as children that they are scary and dangerous - although more children die from car accidents and stabbings than wild animals so whatever!

So natural predators for small rodents keep their numbers in check but that will be a long time because "won't somebody think of the children"..."and the farmers"

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