Appreciating Beavers

​I remember taking a night hike at Eagle Marsh. It was a Beaver Hike. I learned a lot that night, from the LRWP staff, about beavers, their impact on the environment, their challenges living alongside humans, and about their importance to the health of wetlands. Mostly I was excited to be seeing beavers swim the ponds, going to their lodges, and to see their handiwork. Beavers are amazing animals.
 
Luckily it is not difficult to learn more about beavers. Beaver hikes can be found throughout the nation. Beaver reintroductions to lands they originally roamed are being studied. Conferences, seminars, community lectures, and books are plentiful. That is not bad for a species that in North America was almost hunted to extinction.
 
The Beaver Hike at Eagle Marsh that I attended back in November of 2021 had a lasting impact on me. I learned about their near extinction, for their furs, and to “control” potential farmlands.  I learned about the beavers at Eagle Marsh. I saw how they cut trees down and how the marsh had to protect trees from rampant destruction. I learned how their lodges were superficially similar to muskrats but also different. They differed in building material, size, and function. Later I would attend a Breakfast on the Marsh presentation on winter animal adaptations. There I would learn that on occasion muskrats and beavers spend the coldest months of winter together in the beaver lodges.
 
In the Master Naturalist classes we would learn that beavers are the largest rodents in North America. They were essential for environmental health. Part of the citizen science directed by Purdue University Fort Wayne was studying the beaver at Eagle Marsh.
 
On September 13 and 20 I attended the virtual Midwest Beaver Summit. The summit was sponsored by eleven different agencies that work to reintroduce beavers to old habitat or study the impact of beaver on habitat. The speakers were experts on various aspects of beaver behavior and impact.
 
On the first day we heard from authors Ben Goldfarb and author of Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter; and Leila Philip, author of Beaverland.  The presenters talked about the benefits of beaver eco architecture including lodges, dams, and channels. They talked about the creation of wetlands, the filtering of water and flood control. During the past 100 years wetlands have been drained to create farmland and rivers have been straightened, ditched, to move floodwater away from farms. In the process we have developed what the presenters refer to as “ecological amnesia”. We forgot what the geography and the hydrology of the land was prior to the eradication of the beavers. Beavers are now seen as cornerstone species and an integral part of river systems.

The second presentation was by Emily Fairfax, Assistant Professor of Physical Geography at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. She spoke on the Ecosystem Services of Beavers. This was an important talk. Her research highlighted how, across ecological settings, beaver created wetlands protected the surrounding prairies and forests from wildfires. This included protecting the area from megafires. These are fires with 70-foot-tall firewalls, fire tornadoes, and immense size and heat. The beaver created wetlands did protect the plants and the animals living there. Emily provided research on multiple mega fires. She also shared the value of beaver engineering which is calculated to be worth $179,000 per square mile. That includes increasing wildlife and diversity, stabilizing the area, flood control, and fire mitigation. Clearly beavers are important components to an ecology impacted by climate change.
 
The final talk of the first day was by Olivia Dorothy, Director of River Restoration at American Rivers.  Her talk emphasized the importance of beavers to wetlands and rivers as she presented from the captain’s house of a river barge on the Mississippi River. Floodplains are important to the economy; we cannot grow without a source of water. They are important in terms of reducing flood risks, providing recreation, and being a source of fish and wildlife diversity. She talked about the loss of floodplains and the impact of that loss. This includes issues of connectivity between wetlands and the floodplain, hydraulic disconnect and removal of heterogeneity. Olivia Dorothy then went on to explain how beavers can be helpful in all areas of restoration. When beavers are not an option then using technology that mimics their eco-engineering is helpful.
 
The second day of the summit highlights just how beavers positively impact environments. The first presentation was by Steve Windels, Wildlife Biologist at Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota. He talked about how beavers were a keystone species. Their reintroduction led to the reintroduction of other species. Their lodges, dams, and channels created wetlands that lead to a diversity of plants, fish, and birds. They provided feeding grounds for moose and therefore increased the moose population. Ecoengineering also accounted for lower temperatures in the wetlands which is important during climate change. Finally, he described how the beaver engineering led to an increase in reptiles, amphibians, and bat populations. Speakers at the summit referred to beaver communities as the coral reef communities of North America because they were so pivotal to the success of so many other species.
 
The next presentation was very specific, it was about how beaver wetlands play a role in restoring trout and salmon populations during a time of climate change. The speaker was Michael Pollock, a Research Fish Biologist at Northwest Fisheries Science Center for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He presented how beavers restore habitats and, in the process, make the rivers livable again for trout and salmon. He also described how man-made structures that manage the rivers and provide water passage for fish replicate some of the functions of beaver engineering.
 
The final presentation of the summit was by Mike Callahan, Founder/President of The Beaver Institute, and Loren Taylor, BeaverCorps Program Director at The Beaver Institute. They presented how to manage beavers, when their populations and building become a nuisance, in non-lethal ways. This included describing the training available to land and park managers and wildlife specialists.  The summit was exceptional, the speakers based their presentations on data and research as well as lived field experience. The topics were varied. It was a veery good summit.

The last meeting I attended was Beavers, Biodiversity, and Climate Resiliency  on September 28th. It was hosted by Voyageurs National Park and  Great Lakes Now.  Panelists included Anna Sysling, Great Lakes now, Emily Fairfax. Steve K Windells, Shelby Weigand and Sally Petrella. They all talked about the impact ecoengineering had on environments and the importance of keystone species on the vitality of an ecosystem and on biodiversity.
 
This town hall also focused on the two species of beaver. The one we have been focused on is the North American beaver which can be found from Canada to northern Mexico. The other species is the European Beaver which can be found in Europe and Northern Asia. The two species are very similar in appearance and behavior. They however differ chromosomally and therefore cannot interbred.
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Just as much of the beaver population was hunted to extermination in the United States, beaver had also been exterminated in England. They showed parts of a documentary about the reintroduction of the beaver to England. This was seen as an attempt to mitigate some of the consequences of climate change. The beaver did in fact increase wetlands and provided farmers with water during dry periods. This townhall meeting was considerably shorter than the Midwest Summit and yet it provided a lot of useful information.
 
Beavers are incredible animals. They are valuable to the land and other animals. I look forward to watching them and their impact at Eagle Marsh.

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