What we are not seeing in the Fishlake National Forest or indeed nearly anywhere in the entire lower forty-eight is what the country looked like 200 years ago. Before John Deere and Webcor began to alter the landscape, our friend the beaver was doing the job. As O’Brien says, “Restoration of the beaver is a restoration of a landscape to which we don’t have a cultural connection.”
O’Brien’s question, the one the gang of us have convened here in Fishlake National Forest to help her ask, is: Can beavers coexist with cattle grazing, and if so, how? Beaver will eat a lot of things but prefer willow, cottonwood, and aspen. Cattle will eat even more things and they will keep on eating and eating until . . . In Utah and on much of the vast western lands grazed by cattle, the cows never go home. Or hardly ever.
Everything is different when beaver are around. Here’s what happens: Beaver move into an area along a stream or a creek, part of the freshwater system that ultimately connects over the continent in a vast network like human veins and arteries. In that they affect whole cascades of other interaction, beavers are known as a “keystone” species, though some scientists prefer the term “highly interactive species.” They function as multiconnectors. Beavers not only rejigger the ecosystem, but also affect the lay of the land itself. Cutting down trees on the edge of the streams opens up the area, creating new ponds, swamps, and meadows. They actually store a supply of water that can be released in the event of drought. This slowing, spreading, and layering of water is precisely what makes them pests in some areas—you may not want your backyard flooded, for example. But there is no downside to letting beaver help the miles and miles of wild land creeks in a place like Fishlake National Forest attain better resilience, especially confronting climate change.
O’Brien has led volunteer trips to measure willow and aspen browse in these forests since 2008, providing the data to the Forest Service. “I’m showing them where the cattle or elk are making it inhospitable to beaver,” she says, “and they agree with me that beaver should be back on the land.” Despite the fact that everybody can see it with their own eyes, you can’t just say, “Too many cattle spend too much time here,” and expect anything to be done about it. You have to measure the stuff growing out of the caked dirt at the water’s edge, spiky little remnants of . . . well, to figure that out, you have to look closely. We set out to document and measure two types of willow that grow here on Tasha Creek: Salix boothii (Booth’s willow) and Salix geyeriana (Geyer’s willow). You can tell the difference by the glaucous coating on the Geyer’s branches, underneath which the plant has a purplish hue. As with Pando’s younger sprouts, most of the willow we measure has been browsed below the leader, which means the plant cannot grow tall enough to produce catkins, by which it reproduces. Some of the plants are in fact mature, perhaps even ten years old, but have on them not a single leaf. At the outset of every measured transect a photograph and a GPS record is made: proof of where we were and what we did. In pairs of two we measure, call out to each other, and take note. Then we move on, 2 feet at a time. Yup, folks, this is the life of a field biologist, part of the time, anyway.
O’Brien coordinates with other NGO and agency efforts to quantify the value of beaver on the landscape. We live in a dollar-and-cents world, after all, and money is our arbiter. With funds from the Walton Foundation (an NGO branch of the family operations that bring us Walmart), O’Brien contracted a consulting firm to analyze the flow, storage, and transformation of materials and energy within the Escalante Basin, which covers about 2,000 miles, with and without beaver on it. In sum, the report says that if beaver were restored along the 400 miles of creeks and streams that form and feed the Escalante River, their dams could change the flow patterns of up to 500,000 acre-feet a year and recharge (or replenish) the aquifers. (An acre-foot of water is the amount required to cover one acre to a depth of one foot.) Stored water would be valued at $1.4 million to $4.2 million a year. Add to that the value of increased riparian habitat and that’s an additional $175 million to $470 million per year. Then there’s the avoided cost of having to restore the waterways to reduce water temperatures, a metric enforced by state regulations. The beaver would throw this in as part of their deal and save up to $411,000 per square mile. Mark Buckley, the senior economist and lead author of the paper, tells me all these estimates are extremely conservative and don’t include the voluminous benefits provided by a healthy ecosystem, including carbon sequestration and cleaner air. “I’m putting this document in front of as many eyes as I can,” O’Brien says. “People have just got to get it.”
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Add CommentWhat a great read, about the tireless of (s)hero and friend Mary O'brien! Now lets read something about the remarkable good beavers can do even in urban settings! My own city had a colony move into a low lying stream 5 years ago and was worried about flooding. Public pressure forced them to install a flow device which has controlled flooding since that time. Now because of the beaver dams we regularly see otter, steelhead, heron, kingfisher, even mink in our tiny urban stream! Beavers are the trickle down economy that works!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHeidi Perryman, Ph.D.
Worth A Dam
www.martinezbeavers.org