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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%

#91

Post by mxmilkiib »

BrtByte wrote: post #85
_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.

Funny how much of "ecological restoration" sometimes turns out to be undoing a change we made decades ago and then letting the original ecosystem resume doing the maintenance for us

isn't that pretty much the definition of ecological restoration?

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

#92

Post by cucumber3732842 »

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…

The problem isn't the beavers. The beavers bring water with them. With water comes wetland rules and regulation and setbacks and, and, and, and.... and all your plans for whatever you were gonna do with the land go up in smoke. Doubly so if you were planning something cheap and minimal impact. A couple cabins in the forest don't justify huge regulatory expenses to fight this stuff. Whereas BigCo's development can absorb that cost. Bonus points if the locals show up to the planning meeting for the BigCo project and say things like "we don't want things like this here, we want rustic cabins and campgrounds and agriculture and small business".

Wetland regulation also acts like a ratchet. The soil will change from being underwater and so land that would have been considered upland before the beavers will be considered wetland after them even if the plants go back to how they were before the beavers.

Pretty much all the "hey, that's obviously dumb and non-optimal why the F does that make financial sense" stuff you see in land development comes from the massive third rail that is wetlands.

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

#93

Post by goda90 »

BrtByte wrote: post #84
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…

At the very least they give us real-world experiments for what works, and honestly I will take the occasional bit of ecological good news over another article explaining how doomed everything is

And new techniques for future efforts. I forget which groups are doing what but they're doing things like pulling over trees in old plantations to increase diversity, and designing(and iterating on) coral-reef-promoting structures that can be locally manufactured and installed where restoration is needed.

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

#94

Post by freetime2 »

Practical Engineering recently did an episode comparing human dams to beaver dams. Not really an apples to apples comparison because we build dams for very different purposes, but beaver dams are not only less disruptive to the environment - they are often a net positive. Although they do sometimes create a nuisance for human infrastructure.

https://practical.engineering/blog/2026/8/18/are-beavers-act...

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

#95

Post by goda90 »

zeristor wrote: post #79

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.

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

Maybe humans have an instinct for water management like beavers do.

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

I enjoy some of these too. There's also water management focused regenerative agriculture projects that are cool like food garden pond systems in Hawaii[0]

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24uCCr3KjCI

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

#96

Post by NamTaf »

eureka7 wrote: post #54
culi wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's your link without the surveillance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XToPq9lsOM I'd recommend Leila Philip's Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America . It's a great work of narrative science writing. I think we deeply underestimate the profound impact beavers had on the landscape in North America. We truly live in a post-beaver geography. The beaver hat fad in Europe was the primary driver of their popula…

off-topic: I've made a habit of removing all those `si` or `igshid` or `unique_share_id` (thanks airbnb for making it obvious, I guess) and I wish I'd have a "middleware" that removes them when I copy something, but I'm too lazy and it would not be cross-platform. some apps have gotten sneaky though and made every shared URL an apparently unique one :/

It's not the same, as it only works on the receiving end, but I use the ClearURLs addon for stripping that out. At least it somewhat helps, and ensures that any URL I copy from my browser doesn't have tracking IDs.

https://github.com/ClearURLs/Addon

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

#97

Post by throw0101d »

eureka7 wrote: post #54
culi wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's your link without the surveillance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XToPq9lsOM I'd recommend Leila Philip's Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America . It's a great work of narrative science writing. I think we deeply underestimate the profound impact beavers had on the landscape in North America. We truly live in a post-beaver geography. The beaver hat fad in Europe was the primary driver of their popula…

off-topic: I've made a habit of removing all those `si` or `igshid` or `unique_share_id` (thanks airbnb for making it obvious, I guess) and I wish I'd have a "middleware" that removes them when I copy something, but I'm too lazy and it would not be cross-platform. some apps have gotten sneaky though and made every shared URL an apparently unique one :/

> off-topic: I've made a habit of removing all those `si` or `igshid` or `unique_share_id` […]

Also `pp`.

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

#98

Post by destitude »

cornstalks wrote: post #3
josefresco wrote: post #2

Maybe 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.

I actively allow beavers to exist. They have two dams on my property.. Previous owners a long time ago actively exterminated them. The county also actively exterminates them instead of simply putting in simple flood/beaver control devices where necessary.

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

#99

Post by destitude »

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.

There are simple devices that can easily prevent blockage of culverts.

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

#100

Post by tdb7893 »

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…

With how low many wildlife populations are, surprisingly small areas can be ecologically important
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