How a beaver boom is reshaping floods and fire
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- Опубликовано: 14 окт 2024
- Beavers can be a nuisance - but they might also offer some real climate benefits.
David Haakenson thinks about water a lot. That’s because the farm he owns in western Washington experiences frequent, catastrophic floods. And climate change is making that trend worse.
“We had floods in October. We had floods in November, December, January, February, and March,” said Haakenson, the owner of Jubilee Farm. “There's this kind of anxiety that involves - like, when you look out on the field and say, ‘Wow, I make my living off that field and now it's a lake.’”
To protect Jubilee Farm, Haakenson is looking to an unlikely ally: Beavers. Because it turns out, beavers might actually offer some real protection against climate impacts like flooding and wildfires - if people can learn to live with them.
#beavers #flood #climatechange #wildfire
As a kid, my brother and I would often go to the Beaver dam pond way down in back of my Grandparents house in Maine. It was a magical place. Beavers create ecosystems that delight the heart. So much life.
And mosquitoes 🦟
Growing up I remember going fishing with my dad and having to drive the 4 Wheeler with the boat attached over a beaver dam to get to the lake we were going to fish at. Cheers to memories.
@@JsRazza Perhaps instead of spraying poisons we encourage frogs, snakes, and bats to live in the area and keep the mosquitos under control. Then of course the raccoons, foxes and hawks eat the frogs, snakes & bats to keep them under control as well.
As a kid, I would go with my dog down to the beaver dam on our creek. There was always something going on at the dam. Once when I was crossing on the dam, I came face to face with a timber wolf coming the other way. We both backed up and all was good. The beaver pond also had lots of fish and ducks. Animals would come down to the pond to drink. Great memories.
@@JsRazza Mosquitos can breed in any standing water, and removing their natural habitats still leave plenty of artificial ones. You leave a bottlecap on the ground, mosquitoes can breed in it. What can't breed in it is predators of their larvae. You want to eliminate mosquitos by eliminating water, you need complete desertification, and even that isn't a guarantee. Large-ish bodies of water like ponds don't produce the quantities of mosquitoes that some human environments do, or environments like tundra, where there is water, but little or no space for fish or frogs.
Beaver ponds are why North America used to have the deepest, richest soil. Really good news that they're regaining population & people are recognizing their value in managing waterways!
Soil fertility starts with micro-organisms. These need plant roots and vice versa. Over millions of years plants have evolved with animals and need each other. The rich plains grew very tall grasses/plants because of millions of grazing bison, wolves, many, many more animals, e.g., flies, beetles, birds. Beavers are essential, but so are other "apex species".
@@1voluntaryist Choice, a civilisation model that's intentionally complimentary and conducive to this planets range of ecosystems and biomes... A civilisation that has dominance over this planets range of ecosystems and biomes for the sake of human convenience which is our current model. Or a civilisation model that has a degree of tolerance and acceptance for this planets range of ecosystems and biomes... The key to making this choice is to first understand what each potential solution might look and feel like to determine if such an investment is worth the effort as even a moderate change where we develop a degree of tolerance and acceptance will require that we regularly mitigate circumstances of conflict to sustain rewilding projects long term. Substantial change on our part is literally the only viable method to create a permanent solution that doesn't also require regular conflict management...
Beavers are so easy to blame when they cause an issue. But when a LACK of beavers causes an issue ... "Eh, bad luck, guess nature here just doesn't like you"
Useful info, a family of beavers moved into the stream behind my house and are hard at work building a water park ( multiple ponds ). There first pond is almost exactly were I considered building one. Its nice not only are they doing all the work, I think it's save to say they will do the maintenance as well.
Just let the beavers beav
The county I'm from up here in Montana is called beaverhead County because of the amount of beavers. The biggest reason why the population is growing up here is because pelt and musk prices have gone way down so people aren't trapping them anymore. Plus it's a pain in the ass to properly harvest a beaver.
This farmer made a very wise choice.
he was also surprisingly smart and articulate, even had a sense of humor.
usually when you meet a farmer IRL or see one on TV they spout some racist or superstitious nonsense.
hope his farm recovers and flourishes. We have a lot of land going unused and degrading in my country, it ends up as expensive housing, then we complain we have to import food and everything is expensive.
This is my new favorite video. I like what he said about "instead of fighting nature, learn to coexist". Also, 🦫 Beavers are cool.🌳
Yeah go coexist with a lion. Or a wild pack of wolf's. You can coexist I'll keep killing wild animals that destroy our crops and wildlife
Not until it floods your home and fields. I’m no farmer. We should green light all beaver projects, return lands to the wild and beavers, and we should move the farmers and not the beavers. Leave the lands to beavers
If you like video games, Timberborn has you covered!
Bring back the Beavers 😀 Watched a great vid showing part of America that was dry, dusty, until they introduced beavers, showed time lapse pics it was amazing by yr three there was 5 ft trees, shrubs, grasses, flowers, a clean river , loads of wildlife, it's awesome ❤️
Do you remember which vid you watched? If so.....please share. Thanks
Real and artificial beaver dams are one important key to saving the Great Salt Lake. Thank you for this informative video.
I watched "Leave It to Beavers" a while ago and was blown away by their potential to help mitigate climate change. Afterward, I was trying to find a nonprofit that specifically helps restore beaver habitat. Any know of one?
You can make one!
I don’t trust nonprofit organizations, at all. I think we should centralize nonprofit groups and audit their works. Too many nonprofit groups are taking advantage of the system and do more harms than goods.
@@LittleRadicalThinker How do you mean centralize? Like nationalize? Registered charities undergo financial audits already.
@@gweegoop7781 Audit on what they do and how they can benefit the society they serve and audit the results. Centralize the finance, not through some shady businesses cutting 90% of the donations.
When you see cults which hurts people, hide criminals like pedophiles and break families can claim nonprofit status, this has to be some joke with this audit system.
@@LittleRadicalThinker typical communist/marxist...wants everything under the control of their political arm. well commie...NO ONE trusts YOU either.
Humanity owes the beautiful and exquisitely talented beavers a huge apology. Beavers were hunted to extinction in some areas. Now humans are having to (figuratively) eat humble pie and invite beavers back in to repair the damage humankind has caused. Here in the UK beavers have been extinct for the past 400 years. In the last 10 years they have been reintroduced in several key experiments. Those experiments have been so successful that first Scotland and now England have made it illegal to harm or kill beavers. Those who have a beaver "problem" have to work within very tight legal requirements to solve it. At last humankind has caught on.....
Excellent video and one of several I've seen on the topic recently. People are waking up to this fact - nature can solve problems better than we can. Great work. I'm subscribed.
Nature is much more complicated than human can imagine. While human still wrestling with several variables in the equation, like how to balance the climate budget and human livelihood, nature already solved the problem of water storage with beavers.
I am stunned to see politicians and scientists arguing if climate crisis is actually coming, or if we should do this or that for the climate crisis because we have no money for that. What they failed to realize is, this is a human existential crisis, and we need to just do it. The interest and late penalty of this climate crisis debt is only getting worse each and every moment we are not doing anything.
Yes, work with nature, and not against it. After all, we are part of nature, and should learn to live "with-in it", like we are part of it.
@@LittleRadicalThinkerexistential climate crises, LOL.😄
@@knuckledraggingneanderthal720 existential crisis caused by climate. I don’t feel right the way you said that.
Beavers and bats are 'keystone' species that are crucial to habitat conservation.
This was so cute, "Help me Beaver, you're my only hope!"
His farm is in the rivers natural winding pathway. You can literally see the old routes on his farm. It's not just a beaver problem, it's a river problem. It would flood no matter what. But yeah, Beavers in some cases can prevent flooding, but not really during the winter. They're better during the summer when the ponds begin to dry a little.
More, and Worse. He's getting MORE floods, and the floods are WORSE.
The rivers in the PNW used to have exponentially more beavers and they were almost totally obliterated by the 1900s. That river used to be full of thousands of beavers all they way into the cascade range. Also, there used to be nothing but 900 - 1,000 year old trees on that land that were removed from 1800-still today they log it. The kinks and bends are new relative to what was there before and are a result of humans completely changing the watershed.
For those in the UK I recommend the book on bringing back the beaver by Derek Gow. It's eye opening.
Nature knows what it is doing and often we do not
The life of Nature using beavers, deep forests, mossy landscapes and swamps was dedicated to keeping as much rainwater as possible retained on the land. Water is life and life wanted that water on hand, greening everything and refilling the aquifer. Humans undermined that priority and now we need to reverse our folly. At this moment we suddenly realize re-moisturizing the landscape is an imperative priority!
Permaculture Scientists with paddle tails.
For well over a hundred years Americans have drawn on the aquifer wealth beaver accumulated for them. Bickering about beavers when you need them the most sounds a lot like the brilliant Army Corps of Engineers who thought it a good idea to drain the Everglades.
My son convinced me to reintroduce the beavers to our ranch a few years ago and the little buggers literally solved our drought problems in no time. Not only that, we have a nice ecosystem to go with it and some nice trouts and occasional salmons too. Love those critters nowadays, hope they don't move to my neighbor's property a few miles downstream. Larry only as smart as a cold cucumber and loved his aspens more than his wife's beaver. And btw those little rascal engineers are kinda funny too if ya learn to live with 'em. Gave me a few headaches a year ago when they decided to make a new pond on my back road but it ain't a biggie for me though....at least I know water and fires ain't no problem for me now.
The European fashion for beaver hats changed the Ecology of America starting in 1550.
Beavers are nature protectors
They are nature’s eco engineer’s and the slower the stream the lusher and greener the area around the slower water. It helps quench our drought stressed land while also helping refill our ground water. I live down the road from Jubilee farm.
There’s many success stories about land and ecological issues by merely slowing all the water sources down with nature rock weirs and rip rap management. I have watched two stories on RUclips in Areas that are now green and those stories were in Australia and Texas!
Studies here in europe have shown that beavers help replenishing groundwater exactly due to these dams they build. It is not so much that they are in the way, its that we humans are continue to build and use areas that might be more suitable for other things, like giving nature some breathing rooms.
Great to see a forward thinking farmer put these ideas into action?
This farmer is smart, work around nature & save a lot of losses. Our ancestors been working around nature back then and it worked really well.
What are you talking about? What we do now objectively works far better. Have you read a history book, ever?
If you want a video to talk to you like you're a child, you found the right place.
It also wants you to take as lot of unproven things for granted. For example, If a forest has a wildfire it is judged as "preferable" that the forest remains overgrown around a beaver dam. rather than burning in closer to the stream
Beavers were never forgotten in Canada. The beaver is as much a symbol of our country as the Bald Eagle symbolizes the U.S. Our children are taught the lore of the beaver the minute they first set foot in public school. So it's a bit embarrassing that some Americans can teach us the true value of these wonderful animals.
people should not build where beavers live , they live in flood plains
Where I used to live, the beavers were booming. There were lots of “teenaged” beavers looking for places to build dams. They would swim the river into town at night and chew down recently planted trees. I remember walking into Subway. Right next to the entrance were two small Poplar trunks that looked like carefully sharpened pencils.
California needs beavers
If I ever inherit my dad's property in Trinity county one of the things I want to do is introduce beavers to recreate wetlands. I think it'd be pretty cool
"I'm sure they lead rich inner lives, but they really like stopping water from flowing."
😆
Everywhere I’ve been, people are killing off the beavers. The land really needs beavers back. They are a lynch pin species I hope people learn to cherish these animals and let them return.
Australia could have benefited from a native beaver
We may as well introduce them. We're already too far gone with feral rabbits, foxes, cats, dogs, camels, pigs, deer, mice, rats, and toads. May as well have a proven ecologically useful species.
It is more like this I think: "Americans are used to a world without beavers. But this is not a world that is stable in our changing climate"
I grew up in the Bella Coola Valley in the 70s and 80s, MacMillan blodell bought out crown zellerback and clear cut a lot of the Valley and the beautiful snowcapped mountains disappeared. I was up that way around 7 years ago and a lot of the trees had grown back and so to were the snowcapped mountains.
Need to save water & reduce wild fires, beavers to the rescue 🦫🦫🦫🦫
To stop beavers building their dams in inconvenient locations watch a Canadian National Film Board documentary called, the Beaver Whisperer. The park worker learned to use tape recording of running water to get beavers to build their dams there. Initially demonstrated by getting them to not build in culverts thereby flooding the roads.
One has to take into account history on this subject, from the early 1880s trappers decimated beaver populations, it's interesting how mesmerized people are that nature knows more than us.
I was wondering why some beavers build damn in certain location but caused flooding.
But the beavers build took time to see their benefits for us.
Lesson 1: Beavers have goals
Lesson 2: allow them to meet their goals and everyone is a winner.
@@snowysnowyriverwinner:yes. whiner:no.
2:55 “i’m sure they (beavers) lead rich inner lives,” was so funny 😂☺️ i love learning more about this!!
The vernacular meaning of "beaver" reverberates through my addled mind, remembering June Cleaver in "Leave it to Beaver" saying, "Easy on the beaver, Ward..."
Even though I’m a life long beaver trapper (please don’t be mean to me), I greatly respect them for all the good they do. I try to teach my trapping friends to “selectively” harvest beaver when they are trapping so as to not hurt the overall population. They are beautiful and smart animals, and I’m very happy that their populations are growing.
You can thank the Hudson Bay Cimpany for causing the root of this problem. As a farm-family man I can see both sides, but still like beavers.
You have to consider that the farm is in the flood zone. This area should and needs to get flooded so that other areas can stay dry during a flood.
Great job. You see this small animal that can and will make major difference in flood times.
Fantastic video 🌟. All your content is Great!!
besides beavers groves of semi aquatic plants can also create organic permeable dams in fresh water systems
Beavers are cool but don't think you can bother them. We had one guy bleed out quick after a beaver got him good in an leg artery.
Beavers really are amazing
Keep up the work man. Them too.
I always felt bad back in the day my grandparents and folks would destroy them regularly I never like it.
For every time it was like why? there not harming us they actually help out well. By regulating are floods from are creeks. In bad irony for them are neighbor down stream had the bigger dam that cross in ares and help hold water for area we were at top of creek water flow anyway he blew it up and then my family finally realize all dams they blew really meant dry no swamp no water for ponds and no water lingers here anymore. It’s flows now sure but not much life around as before. It’s been shameful reminder to me of why coexisting is very important.
If you don't like beavers you don't like to stop water.
This all used to be lowland rainforest. Humans moved in, cut all the trees down, and built settlements but nature never left and it's still rainforest regardless of how much people try to suppress it. You mentioned the beaver hunters but loggers slash and burned all of Washington state during western expansion which is why it's difficult to find trees over 200 years old even in the national park (WA evergreens can live thousands of years).
That's what we need. More beavers!
My dad owned property in Duvall and even owned Drunken Charlie's place on Stossel Creek. That farm has been flooding for the 50 years I've been going by it. We had beaver on Stossel creek back when.
This is a cool farmer. "I'm sure beavers have rich inner lives..."
We need more Beavers. Save our Beavers.
Steve Irwin always said be kind to animals and they will be kind to you
@3:00 "They have one joy in life and that is stopping water. They probably have other ones, I'm sure they lead a rich inner life, but they love stopping water from flowing." 😆😆
I mean I think beavers are good to replenish groundwater and create a more varied ecosystem, especially for aquatic birds and amphibians, but do beavers take into account the maximum flood stage of a stream when building dams. I mean I think a big flood will just destroy their little dams especially if the water rises above the dam, it will just float away since its mostly wood and mud
That (floods taking dams) happens. Beavers evolved with that happening, so it won't be as bad as imaginable.
Also, if there is enough beavers, there wont be a huge flood- most of that will be caught before it becomes a fast, destructive flood wave.
Also, the dams always have leaks, so i guess they don't completely float away when water percolates though them.
And only dry wood floats- soggy wood sinks (but will, of course, still be swept away by fast water)
Beavers; Can't live with them, Cant live without them...
😊
Well, you can, but most people like interacting with beavers.
Also, the numbers are wrong.
If there are more than 330 million people in the US,
there will be about 165 million beavers in additon to those ....40? million in the wild.
Pretty sure Beavers are like "look who came crawling back"
Do any of the objections to human dams apply to beaver dams? Can the fish pass through? I love the idea of hydro-power, but not sure how bad they truly are for the environment.
Fish have been coexisting with beavers for over 9,000 years. Beaver dams are not nearly at the scale or longevity of human-made dams. Salmon have been observed going over, around, and wiggling through beaver dams.
Unlike human-made dams, beaver dams let water through, some of those ponds are actually a good place for fish to lay their offspring and seek shelter.
the pond that beavers create makes a good environment for fish hatcheries and once the fish are big enough they can jump over the dam very easily
@@manjensen1710with human made dams the issue scales with the size of the dam, but in general it is possible to build a "fish ladder" to allow fish to go around the dam. (Let a small amount of water flow down a channel that simulates rapids and most migratory fish can figure it out.)
“Population of 60 million to 400 million at one time?” How is this even an estimation? Couldn’t it be narrowed a little more?!
There weren't that many people writing stuff down, back then.
It's propably an extrapolation from population density studies in intact beaver ecosystems,
catch numbers from fur hunters,
Known geological traces of the beavers artificial floodplains,
and also subject to natural variation over time, with the aftermath of the ice age, competing animals and predators showing up or dying out, diseases, ...
If there's one thing I like, it's a good beaver.
Man, I hope this resurgence in beaver population means top hats are coming back in style! 😂
Beaver dams also control agri run off and sewage over flows. We need to build imitation beaver dams in the UK below the sewage outlets, the more the better.
do flood waters freeze over in that farm in winter December- January ?
of course the constant flooding is also why the soil is so good, that's why farmers historically have had issues with flooding, the plots of land best suited for growing things are in natural floodplain.
so weird how beavers and natives coexisted for millenia but the second the europeans got here everything went downhill
I'm not questioning people's right to do what they want with their land, but the more you engineer and control an environment the less resilient it will be to natural phenomena and climactic fluctuations. If you want a barren fallow to farm every year with orderly irrigation lines and no wildlife then you'll get really good short-term production but you'll pay for that efficiency in the long run. You leave any farm long enough and it'll start producing diddly squat after X number of years, but I think the proper equilibrium between natural and managed lies a bit more towards natural then most people think.
I _am_ questioning the right of people to do with their property as they please :)
Yeah, shouldn't be able to degrade your soil and surrounding ecosystems etc. Its a touchy subject for most tho.@@nos9784
Give them space and natural irrigation will return to restore aquatic habitats and farms.
How could they not think about beavers and not think about proper beaver management. You should always consider and properly maintain the beaver population in the valley to regulate natural flooding. I am lost on their lack of focus
So how do I get beavers to move into my creek?
Beavers are awesome.
Beavers and farmers are enemies. To solve this problem , zone any area near any creek , stream or river unavailable for farming within 10 miles .
I thought I was gonna watch beavers get boomed
Power to the beavers
The Chinese grow rice in the swamps. In Canada, cranberries are harvested by flooding in the swamps.
As much as I like having beavers around a lot of your math simply doesn't pardon the pun hold water! Beaver dams are almost always full to capacity therefore if flood water comes down it's not going to get held back by it it's going to go over the top of it and furthermore it sure the hell not going to soak into the soil cuz the Beaver Dam has already fully saturated the soil for months and years ahead of time!
Ah, damn. With just your keyboard, you have proven all the research wrong.
/sarcasm
It's obviously more complicated than that. I'm not an expert, but:
just like a weir, even a full reservoir slows down a flood and limits erosion.
It spreads the flow along the crest, instead of a narrow channel.
And the pond isn't always full. It isn't watertight enough for that.
It's more of a flow restriction, causing a flow rate- dependant height of water to be held back. And more water going downstream increases that height.
Even in a simple weir, more flow means a higher wave pouring over the crest.
This reduces the maximum height of a flood downstream.
Also, due to capilary action, wet soil will suck in water faster than dry soil.
It can't hold as much water- but it sucks it up faster. Mulch, roots, compost help with that, and there is more of those due to the beaver.
@@nos9784 how many beaver dams do you have on your property I have about 300 so let's compare brain pans and see who knows more about how the hydrologic conditions of a stream change predam versus post dams!
Climate change has happened throughout the ages. We must adapt to nature as they protect our surroundings.
That nice flat land next a river is often part of the river that dries up for parts of the year.
Wynona's Big Brown doing it's thing getting everything hot and wet! ham ham ham ham ham.
We here in germany have a similar problem with Wolfs returning
I didn't know the wolves had started building dams. Amazing!
😅
@@nos9784 the Video Pointen out that people have Problems with returning beavers, and so have oeople problems with eeturning wolves
I wanna be a beaver!
Shocking what humanity has done and destroyed and we’re still doing it!
Beavers aren’t the problem
Go Beavers!!
Then the upstream will flood. Also, the downstream will receive less water, so wild fire can cross there. It's just shifting the locations where problems occur.
Hmm bet all those beavers would make nice hats🤔
Welcome to another episode of "Leave it to Beaver"
Go Beaver!!
Looks like God didn't make a mistake with beavers after all.
I guess we just leave it to Beaver. I couldn’t resist.
Davud Haakenson might think about water a lot, but personally I think about the Roman Empire more
Sometimes we all have to try new things because the old one is not working.
Human beings are finally getting a clue. Here in California the Department of Fish and Wildlife continue to trap and kill beavers. How ignorant are these people?
Humans have change the landscape. But beaver never change is nature. Build more dam. That's they natural behavior.
Topic in interesting but presentation spoiled because Grist couldn't refrain from pushing cc propaganda.
It seems that once upon a time there were very few farmers. So there were a lot of Beavers in the forest wetlands and Bison in the Great Plains. Nature had achieved a very ecological balance. Then came the European Farmers and the Bison were annihilated and the Beavers were as well. Maybe there may be too many farmers? Maybe one in 10 farms may some day be REWILDED?
Need a correction: Climate Change activists are causing more fires. The fires in the coastal regions of the Pacific have been caused by among other things humans starting fires. Prior to the big tragic fire in Maui, authorities had arrested people for arson in the same area. So it’s apparent that when there’s no proof of climate change, extremists will do their best to cause it. Also show data indicating that there have been an abnormal fire or drought. Don’t look at ten years of data look at decades worth. If you do, you will see there are cycles that pre-date the humans in the West.