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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%

#111

Post by pfdietz »

culi wrote: post #53
reilly3000 wrote: post #49

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

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…

Current North American beaver population is estimated to be in the range of 10 to 15 million.

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

#112

Post by lukas099 »

JshWright wrote: post #105
BrtByte wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What else could "restoration" mean?

I think their point was that, instead of trying to reengineer and rebuild an entire ecosystem, you fix one or two things that were preventing nature from restoring itself.

I believe this is called "Process-Based Restoration".

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

#113

Post by simpaticoder »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #73
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 impa…

This is a good way to look at it. The more and more complex life survives the anthropocene, the better off the biosphere when this Age has passed. Many times in the past life survived in small pockets (an evolutionary bottleneck event), so making small pockets is more than just a symbolic gesture.

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

#115

Post by lukas099 »

pfdietz wrote: post #111
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…

Current North American beaver population is estimated to be in the range of 10 to 15 million.

Yeah they have rebounded a lot and we should celebrate that.

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

#116

Post by lukas099 »

bcjdjsndon wrote: post #86
lbriner wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ro…

> it is the need for a full food-chain of animals to keep populations in-check The error you make is that there is only one, global ecosystem, and it sorts itself out. We won't be matching the power of the dinosaur comet anytime soon, and even that gave rise to mammals and eventually space travel so just chill... We dont need to do a thing

> We won't be matching the power of the dinosaur comet anytime soon, and even that gave rise to mammals

Great, biodiversity will be restored in 100 million years, just in time for my great-great-great-great......grandchildren to enjoy.

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

#117

Post by marcosdumay »

goda90 wrote: post #95
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…

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

We absolutely do. For both water and fire management.

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

#118

Post by throwitaway222 »

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

Next up - if human manipulation of the world makes it so that these animals stay animals or if we're just setting things up to be the next padded safe room and their behavior changes. (as if it hasn't already)

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

#119

Post by lukas099 »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #59
jpollock wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> They will continue to breed, expanding territory unless there are predators Maybe part of the problem is that humans in North America are largely not hunting beavers anymore? We're very capable of being the predators that keep animal populations in check, and plenty of people do still hunt, but I don't think I've ever heard of anyone hunting beavers in my life

I do believe people still hunt beaver, but they usually trap them instead of shooting.

When I got my hunting license, part of the safety course was about trapping. The impression I got from that was that trapping is basically torturing animals to death and infinitely worse than shooting them with rifles.

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

#120

Post by lukas099 »

pvaldes wrote: post #89
josefresco wrote: post #2

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

We need a professional approach there, able to see the whole picture. Amateurism can be really expensive. Sometimes beavers are a big mistake. Hazelnuts and willows can be chopped to the ground and just will return stronger and more dense. Poplars will regrow from the roots at some distance. Argentinian trees they will vanish instead. This happens because temperate South American forests never evolved with beavers. O…

I would've thought it was obvious we shouldn't introduce beavers to South America if they aren't native there.
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