00:03:12.940but it wasn't really until a few years ago that I became a true beaver believer, you know, a member
00:03:18.780of the beaver cult. And I was living in Seattle and I met a biologist named Kent Woodruff. I worked
00:03:25.040for the Forest Service. He was then the director of the Metau Beaver Project. And what the Metau
00:03:29.680Beaver Project does is they live trap quote unquote nuisance beavers, you know, beavers that
00:03:34.980are clogging up road culverts or cutting down people's ornamental trees or what have you.
00:03:40.040And they relocate those beavers to public land, build their dams, store water, create some fantastic wildlife habitat and really do some good.
00:03:49.420So it was, you know, it was going with Kent and his Metau Valley beaver crew to some of the places where they had relocated beavers, you know, seeing these incredible infrastructural complexes and recognizing just how much water these animals were capturing and storing on a pretty dry landscape in central Washington.
00:04:08.360And it was really incredible to see how the most vibrant habitat and the best water storage sites were the ones that were created by this incredible animal.
00:04:18.400So I think it was going out there with Kent and his crew, these really gifted interpreters of landscape that convinced me to see the beaver not only as one cool animal among many cool animals in North American ecosystems, but actually this, again, as you say, a keystone species, this animal really responsible for creating so much life.
00:04:38.360Yes, absolutely. Beavers are just, they are responsible for creating so much life. And
00:04:44.980most of us have forgotten that we are living in a land that beavers initially created.
00:04:51.840The pre-colonial landscape of Turtle Island, a time in which there were hundreds of millions
00:04:57.120of beavers roaming the land, looked vastly different than what we remember. So how did
00:05:03.060these masters of complexity and stewards of biodiversity engineer our shared ecosystems?
00:05:10.220Yeah, as you say, there's no question, you know, we don't totally know what North America looked
00:05:14.760like before European arrival and beaver trapping began, but there's no question it was just a much
00:05:19.280lusher, wetter, greener place. You know, you read these accounts of explorers like Lewis and Clark,
00:05:26.300you know, traversing pre-trapping North American landscapes, you know, and they encountered
00:05:30.660beaver dams as far as the eye could see in every single tributary of the Missouri River you know
00:05:36.380there are explorers talking about crossing the state of Indiana and not finding a dry place to
00:05:41.820camp for a hundred miles because in part because beavers had so thoroughly ponded up and turned
00:05:48.700soggy the American Midwest you know so just again it's hard to know exactly what what these
00:05:54.780ecosystems look like but there's just no question that that beavers profoundly transformed them you
00:06:00.320You know, the initial population estimate for beavers in North America was as many as 400 million animals, creating potentially hundreds of millions of ponds, you know, and also creating just fantastic wildlife habitat.
00:06:11.940You know, you think about all of the animals who depend on these beaver-built environments.
00:06:16.580Think about the frogs and salamanders that breed in beaver ponds and the waterfowl that nest and forage in them and the moose that cool off in them and the juvenile salmon and trout that rear in beaver ponds.
00:06:30.320I don't think that we we don't really think about beaver trapping as being this environmental catastrophe on the same level as the deforestation of the northeast or the busting of the American prairie or, you know, placer mining in the Sierra Nevada.
00:06:42.700But I think that we should. I think that we should reconceive beaver trapping as this really dramatic, catastrophic form of environmental change that had really dire implications for all kinds of species in North America and Europe as well.
00:06:58.700You know, there are beavers in Europe and the destruction of that animal would have been a similar kind of environmental disaster.
00:07:06.860Yeah, there was just not any forethought on what decimating this species would do to, like you were saying, wildlife habitat, entire wetland ecosystems.
00:07:19.280It's really incredible to imagine how much has changed.
00:07:23.660And in your book, you express that more than any other natural resource, beavers help explain
00:07:30.440just about every significant American event between European arrival and the Civil War.
00:07:35.940We should all understand that the economic and geographic expansion of settlers would
00:07:41.080not have been made feasible without the dissemination of beavers.
00:07:45.060And along with this ecological loss, there was also a spiritual loss amongst the land
00:07:50.840and waters and indigenous peoples of Turtle Island. So how are beavers integral to the story
00:07:57.720of colonization? And how can we begin to understand the multiplicity of colonizations
00:08:04.400that took place during the period that you call the furpocalypse?
00:08:08.940Yeah, you know, beavers were really this critical sort of economic resource when colonists first
00:08:15.000arrived in the New World. You know, to use one example, I mean, when the pilgrims showed up,
00:08:18.920They owed lots of money to their creditors back in England. The only way they could repay those debts was by shipping beaver furs back across the Atlantic to the people who had bankrolled them. So beavers really made the Plymouth colony and the Massachusetts Bay colony possible.
00:08:34.760I mean, the Louisiana Purchase was in part Jefferson wanting to acquire new lands for beaver trapping.
00:08:41.680The Revolutionary War, I mean, one of the things that sort of angered colonists was the British restricting access to trapping grounds west of the Appalachians.
00:08:51.460So, you know, beavers were sort of at the center of so many early events and conflicts because they were such an important economic resource.
00:08:59.080And as you say, again, beavers were also one of the things that brought the first white explorers and traders and trappers into contact with Native Americans.
00:09:09.920A lot of the diseases that wiped out Native tribes were spread by European explorers and beaver traders.
00:09:18.620So it was this really, really significant early industry.
00:09:22.700And, you know, I think that colonization may have been inevitable without beavers, but there's no question that the fur trade expedited that process of European westward expansion across North America.
00:09:36.780As this beaver industry reduced beaver populations and also inadvertently decimated native populations, you know, we did lose so much ecological knowledge about the importance of this animal.
00:09:47.500One example is that the Blackfeet Nation in Montana, because they understood how integral beavers were to creating water sources in the really dry northern plains landscape, they actually had prohibitions against killing beavers and considered beavers a really important spiritual deity.
00:10:07.060The ethnographer Rosalind Lapeer has written extensively about this, that they basically would not cooperate with the early fur traders who wanted them to acquire pelts.
00:10:19.300Blackfeet refused to do so because they knew how important these animals were.
00:10:23.620So there was all of this really incredible ecological knowledge among indigenous peoples about the importance of beavers and transformed those ecological relationships.
00:10:33.760You know, a lot of that knowledge was changed or lost to the detriment of everybody.
00:10:40.380It's really heartbreaking to recount this time that's really just fed into the extinction crisis that we're facing now.
00:10:48.360And I think about the furpocalypse and the indigenous peoples, you know, you had mentioned some of the relations that they were having, but I'm wondering how did the furpocalypse force indigenous peoples to sever the threads of kinship and subsistence with beavers in order to forage livelihoods based on extraction?
00:11:09.080Because from reading your book and other research, they weren't always able, the indigenous people weren't always able to fight for the beaver.
00:11:18.400Yeah. I'm one of many, many people who have written about the ways that the arrival of the fur trade sort of transformed, not just the fur trade, but really the arrival of European colonists.
00:11:31.660But the fur trade in particular really transformed the relationship of indigenous people with the land from one of subsistence to sort of one of capitalism and extraction.
00:11:40.540And of course, that was foisted upon them in many ways. As Harold Hickerson has put it, you know, I mean, Native people in the Northeast, especially basically became, you know, a vast forest proletariat who went out and trapped beavers and other mammals, you know, and returned the furs to white people in exchange for commercial goods. And that really transformed the relationship of people with the land.
00:12:04.680You know, it's kind of interesting. I mean, what I think is really fascinating is the ways in which in the Northeast where water is relatively abundant and the forests are pretty dense, a lot of native people were very willing participants in the fur trade. You know, the white traders showed up. They wanted beaver furs. They didn't really know how to trap beavers themselves. They didn't really have much interest in trapping beavers themselves. And they basically dispatched native people to go do their dirty work for them and return these pelts.
00:12:31.220And then as the fur trade spread west, you know, as I said earlier, I mean, lots of western tribes where water is much scarcer, those tribes recognized that these beavers were critical to creating watering holes for bison and waterfowl and other animals, refused to participate in the fur trade.
00:12:47.520And the white people sort of chalked that up to laziness or stubbornness.
00:12:51.660But, of course, that was really a reflection of ecological knowledge.
00:12:54.380So the reason that the famous Mountain Men era began, you had white people like Kit Carson and Jedediah Smith and Peter Skeen Ogden, all of these sort of legendary trappers who you could see in movies like The Revenant.
00:13:08.020You know, the reason those white people were forced to become trappers was because Western native people prized beaver for their incredibly integral role in creating water sources.
00:13:19.300You know, so so in a lot of ways that I mean, kind of the history of Western expansion was driven by these tribal cultural practices that, again, related to their ecological knowledge of how important beavers are in arid landscapes.
00:13:33.680That is really fascinating to understand the history of the westward expansion through the beavers and the relationship shifts between colonizers, settlers, and the indigenous people and just how that manifested into what we're seeing today.
00:13:56.580Just to take us back, it was an insatiable colonial thirst for dominance and resources and wealth that originally squandered the beaver population.
00:14:08.060And I think back to a passage in your book that shares the story of George Simpson and the Hudson Bay Company.
00:14:13.680and Simpson, worried about American encroachment into the Oregon Territory, implemented a fur
00:14:20.060desert policy, you know, purposely leaving no beavers alive in the watersheds they trapped
00:14:25.680in a means of deterring American fur trappers who were moving northwest.
00:14:30.900While reading that account, I couldn't help but think on another statistic you mentioned,
00:14:34.920that in 2017 alone, Wildlife Services murdered 23,646 beavers,
00:14:44.520equaling one beaver death every 22 minutes.
00:15:01.040I mean, I think that the continuous thread is that we still don't fully recognize how important these animals are.
00:15:08.380The fur desert policy you're talking about, I mean, that was, as you said, it was basically the Hudson's Bay Company, which was sort of this vast British fur monopoly based in Canada, wanted to prevent American settlers from moving to the northwest because they wanted to claim the Oregon Territory for Britain.
00:15:25.300At the time, the Oregon Territory was sort of jointly occupied by the British and the Americans.
00:15:29.560They hadn't quite figured out where to put the border between Canada and the U.S.
00:15:33.660So they basically trapped out all of the beavers there.
00:15:36.840And actually, the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada, normally they had a relatively, compared to other fur companies, a kind of relatively progressive attitude about beaver trapping.
00:15:45.560They were somewhat more sustainable pregnant females, for example.
00:15:49.560But in the Oregon Territory, they basically said, you know, let's just kill everything so that the Americans don't have any reason to come up here.
00:15:55.700They completely wiped out beavers in all of the inland northwest, which is where I live today.
00:16:03.720The Wildlife Services issue you're talking about, I mean, that's the Wildlife Services is basically a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that's sort of tasked with controlling problematic wildlife.
00:16:13.580You know, coyotes that kill sheep, for example, or starlings that eat farmer crops.
00:16:18.880You know, they kill over 20,000 beavers each year.
00:16:21.120So over the centuries, our relationship toward beavers has sort of shifted.
00:16:25.700I mean, initially, it was one of sort of capitalism and economic extraction and resource use.
00:16:32.280Now, the beaver fur trade is, you know, is sort of on life support.
00:16:38.000But, you know, we still kill lots of beavers as we view them as nuisances.
00:16:42.940So, you know, our motivation killing them has somewhat shifted.
00:16:46.360We're still fundamentally antagonistic toward beavers in a lot of respects.
00:16:50.840And, you know, what my book is about is basically saying, you know, this animal has always been integral to American history and landscapes and ecology and economies.
00:17:01.680How can we shift that relationship one more time?
00:17:04.760You know, we've gone from extraction to antagonism.
00:17:08.440We go from antagonism to cooperation or partnerships.
00:17:12.420I think that's the that's the connection there is that we just don't fully understand how important these animals are for so many environmental reasons.
00:17:19.540And how can we steward them as sort of partners in ecological restoration rather than treating them as a resource to be extracted or a nuisance to be trolled?
00:17:31.580It's really insane to hear these short-sighted strategies implemented by government or settlers, these federal agencies, state agencies, to continue to still kill that many beavers, over 20,000 beavers a year.
00:17:50.760and the repercussions that we're having with intense droughts and and now going into climate
00:17:58.900change it's really so frustrating and honestly I'm hearing this all over the world it's just
00:18:04.740it's nuts like the killing of wolves up in Canada I mean this is just a massive issue with the
00:18:10.720killings of wildlife and rather than seeing a wildlife habitat being actually something valuable
00:18:17.500and these wildlife performing some ecosystem service which I actually don't agree with
00:18:22.460but I also realize that that's how people need to put it into words for some people to care is to
00:18:30.100put it into these ecosystem service rules it's just it's just really insane and in the absence
00:18:35.860of beavers you know wetlands have dried up and rich and diverse meandering streams have eroded
00:18:41.740and vital habitats have been just deadened.
00:19:10.600You know, that I do think that there's a danger to sort of ascribing value to nature and to wildlife because, you know, what do you do with the species that doesn't play, you know, a super obvious role in water storage or, you know, wetland creation?
00:19:27.040But I think that the agencies that make decisions about wildlife, that's exactly their mentality.
00:19:33.240You know, they're trying to maximize things like water storage and aquifer recharge and wildlife habitat creation.
00:19:40.880In the book, you know, I do sort of talk about beavers as a tool almost, which makes me uncomfortable in some ways because I don't, you know, I don't want to be too utilitarian.
00:19:51.020But I also think that that's a really effective strategy for reaching people, especially the people who call the shots.
00:19:57.280you know as for the as for the question about shifting baselines i mean i think that's exactly
00:20:01.120i think what what has happened uh over the course of centuries is sort of this process of ecological
00:20:07.280amnesia you know where each sort of successive generation basically forgets what the environment
00:20:13.760used to look like you know it's sort of like the classic story of today you know i go i go catch a
00:20:18.800five pound fish and i'm really excited but i don't realize that you know my grandfather used to catch
00:20:22.88050 pound fish. Right. And I think that, you know, that beavers are, they kind of fit into the same
00:20:28.060paradigm where, you know, we, we don't fully appreciate how rich and abundant North American
00:20:35.280landscapes used to be because, you know, we just, when the trappers decimated the beaver populations,
00:20:41.460you know, there were no ecologists and naturalists to record those processes. So we've just forgotten
00:20:47.060so much about what what our landscapes used to look like or what they should look like but you
00:20:52.860know at the same time and i think the shifting baselines thing works in both directions right i
00:20:56.840mean at the turn of the century in 1900 you know we were down to something like 100 000 beavers in
00:21:02.160all of north america i mean from a population that used to be as high as 400 million you know
00:21:07.040so beavers had just completely collapsed now they've actually recovered really well i mean now
00:21:11.160that you know nobody quite knows how many beavers are in north america today but it's probably 15
00:21:15.140million or so is the best estimate that I've seen. So, you know, we've gone from a hundred
00:21:19.940thousand beavers and them being extirpated in, you know, the entire American Northeast
00:21:25.380to having 15 million beavers. And, you know, now you can drive down like the Mass Pike in
00:21:30.880central Massachusetts and see a beaver lodge every five minutes, which I think is pretty cool. So,
00:21:37.460you know, so we've lost a lot, but, you know, beavers are also one of our great wildlife
00:21:41.880success stories, really proof for how well conservation can work when we commit to it.
00:22:41.880One thing you had mentioned is that these federal agencies or state agencies,
00:23:01.660they are wanting to protect aquifers and keeping resources such as water abundant.
00:23:10.500so why would they then want to kill beavers you know i if beavers help with water retention and
00:23:18.420they support wetlands and ponds what is their thought process behind killing the beavers to
00:23:24.260then protect aquifers and wetlands yeah so you know it's a it's a good question i mean i think
00:23:30.560i think that the issue is that you know a lot of times you just have government agencies working at
00:23:35.860at cross purposes. You know, so like in Wyoming, for example, you know, you've got the federal
00:23:41.340agency, which is the U.S. Forest Service that manages a lot of a lot of the public land in
00:23:44.520Wyoming. You know, they're actually doing beaver relocations and reproductions in some of their
00:23:49.400forests because, you know, they recognize how these animals are for habitat creation. But at
00:23:54.040the same time, we've got a state agency, the Department of Game and Fish, which, you know,
00:23:58.240is permitting the continued trapping of beavers because, you know, they depend in part on the
00:24:04.740revenue from trapping license sales. So you've got a federal agency and a state that are sort of
00:24:10.620working at cross purposes because they have different motives and objectives. You know,
00:24:14.780the same deal is true in the Northwest, you know, where you've got the National Marine Fishery
00:24:19.720Service really promoting the use of beavers as a way to improve salmon habitat because, you know,
00:24:25.060salmon is a really beaver dependent fish. And then meanwhile, you've got, you know,
00:24:29.940You've got Wildlife Services, the agency that sort of controls, quote unquote, nuisance animals, basically killing beavers because they're clogging up road culverts.
00:24:38.520You know, so you've got, again, this time two federal agencies who are working across purposes because, you know, their sort of governing missions are very different.
00:24:48.760So I think that's, you know, I think that's why you get these somewhat nonsensical outcomes in a lot of cases is because you have agencies whose objectives are just completely different.
00:24:58.180And, you know, they're both tasked with managing this species that just crosses so many jurisdictional boundaries.
00:25:06.380How does stronger understanding of ecological history, you know, flawed as it may be, combat shifting baseline syndrome?
00:25:17.860I mean, I think, you know, I think that's exactly it.
00:25:21.040We just have to get out there and experience these landscapes.
00:25:25.280You know, I think, I mean, to me, one of the great things about beavers is that they're just, you know, they're such fun, charismatic animals to watch.
00:25:32.540You know, it's like I love seeing wildlife of all shapes and sizes, but there are really few species that you can watch, engage in behaviors as complex and interesting as beavers.
00:25:45.580I mean, I was out there a couple of nights ago in at along the Spokane River, you know, and I and I watched a beaver, you know, swimming up and down rapids, going to this willow stand, you know, cutting, cutting willow, swimming back through the rapids, carrying the willow, depositing it downstream to be used in construction later, coming back upstream.
00:26:05.020mean, it was really just, you know, this incredible, you know, sort of complex, interesting set of
00:26:09.700behaviors. So that's just, you know, I mean, to me, beavers are just so much fun to watch. And I
00:26:13.800guess that's the, you know, that's kind of the antidote to the ecological forgetting that we've
00:26:17.940experienced is just getting out there and seeing these animals, seeing also some of the happiest,
00:26:22.540you know, beaver memories are you go to a beaver pond and you don't, you don't see the beavers
00:26:25.540themselves, but you see, you know, you see the frogs that are using the foraging canals that
00:26:30.680beavers dig you know you see kingfishers uh you know fishing fishing for juvenile trout uh in the
00:26:37.320pond you know you see moose coming down to the the pond to drink you know you see bear tracks and
00:26:42.440scat and you know and and scratch marks on trees you know because because bears you know love these
00:26:48.560amazingly abundant habitats so i think that's you know that's kind of the secret is just getting
00:26:52.780out there seeing beavers and you know and seeing all of the life that these animals support and
00:26:57.960Recognizing that once upon a time, there were so many more of these beaver-created habitats.
00:27:03.280They were so much more abundant and integral to landscapes.
00:27:08.040Relationships between humans and beavers are taking on new forms.
00:27:13.240Despite the rebound in beaver population, their cultural caring capacity is still somewhat tumultuous.
00:27:19.480What are some of the most common interactions or challenges you've witnessed people experiencing with beavers?
00:27:25.280and how can our listeners be encouraged to respectfully engage with beavers in their
00:27:30.300bioregion? Are there certain policies that have directly led to the renewal of beaver populations?
00:27:37.620Yeah, so you're right that cultural carrying capacity for beavers is in a lot of places
00:27:43.100pretty low. You know, scientists talk about the biological carrying capacity being, you know,
00:27:47.860how many beavers or deer or bears or whatever a given ecosystem can support, right? I mean,
00:27:52.960how much habitat is there how much food is there that's sort of the biological carrying capacity
00:27:57.480but then you've got the cultural carrying capacity which is you know how many beavers in this case
00:28:02.320will people support or tolerate you know how many can be on the landscape before people you know
00:28:07.500start getting uh angry about you know about the flooding in their backyard or what what have you
00:28:12.440you know and those are very different numbers right that biological carrying capacity and the
00:28:16.400cultural carrying capacity so i think what a lot of people are trying to do now is to is to say
00:28:20.320well you know by solving some of these beaver problems non-lethally without killing the
00:28:25.900offending beavers can we raise that cultural carrying capacity can we convince more people
00:28:30.760to tolerate more beavers by solving those problems better basically the way that most beaver conflicts
00:28:38.040are addressed is just trapping out the beavers who cause the problems which you know maybe works in
00:28:42.660the short run but of course all you're doing is just creating a vacancy sign for the next family
00:28:46.660of beavers right as long as the habitat is there beavers are always going to be back in there and
00:28:50.740you're always going to have the conflict incur the cost of hiring a trapper and you'll be killing
00:28:56.500the beavers so you know i think i think one really great solution that's that's promoted as a as kind
00:29:01.220of an answer to some of these conflicts is what's called a flow device and a flow device is basically
00:29:06.000this sort of pipe and fence system you pass the pipe through the beaver dam or through the road
00:29:11.860culvert or whatever and you basically move water from you know the upstream side of the beaver pond
00:29:17.600to the downstream side and you know you put little fences around the around the the inflow and outflow
00:29:22.600of the pipe to prevent beavers from clogging it up and that that way you can basically regulate
00:29:26.380the height of the pond so you can say hey you know i like having the beavers here i appreciate what
00:29:30.860they do but you know i don't want to have to wade through my backyard you can use one of these flow
00:29:36.080devices to basically manage that problem allowing the beavers to remain in place i think that's the
00:29:41.560really critical thing is letting the beavers stay put while also solving the problem so you know
00:29:47.940places that have that have implemented those kinds of solutions have really seen not only dramatic
00:29:52.700environmental benefits but also dramatic economic benefits right because you're you know you're
00:29:56.700you're solving the problem you're not having to trap those beavers every year and you're avoiding
00:30:00.700the damage to the road or whatever property you're worried about so i think that you know when you
00:30:04.560look at in new england especially in the northeast you know there are a handful of people who are
00:30:08.560working on these issues using these flow devices and experiencing really really great results so
00:30:14.380if you're listening at home i would encourage you to check out a website called the beaver institute
00:30:18.580which is a non-profit founded by this guy named mike callahan mike is one of the kind of the
00:30:23.440world's leaders in uh in flow device installation and non-lethal beaver conflict resolution this
00:30:30.320non-profit the beaver institute has a really wonderful website with lots of information about
00:30:35.100how you can go about installing these flow devices, finding somebody professional in your
00:30:39.640area to install them for you, and why they're such a valuable technique. So Beaver Institute,
00:30:45.280check that out if you're listening to this podcast. I went to a community beaver talk and
00:30:52.200there was, I remember a woman there who said that she really cared about the environment,
00:30:56.860but did not want beavers reintroduced because she didn't want the valley part of her land to be
00:31:03.100flooded and i think there's a real disconnect between saying that we care about the environment
00:31:10.080but only if it doesn't disrupt what we think our lives or what we feel like we're entitled to
00:31:17.200really i think is what it is i'm thinking about how do present-day beaver reintroductions and
00:31:22.620conflicts challenge the boundaries of our colonial perceptions of structure nature and order and then
00:31:31.720also at what point in time do we see the emergence of cultural carrying capacity with regards to
00:31:36.700beavers? Good question. You know, I think that, and I think you're right, that there's this sort
00:31:42.340of this idea, this ancient idea that's, that is just so deeply embedded in human thought and
00:31:48.920consciousness that, you know, we are sort of, we are godlike, right? I mean, you know, in the Bible,
00:31:55.120it says that, you know, God granted us dominion over all of the beasts of the earth, right? And
00:31:59.640think that that mindset even makes its way into the mentalities of environmentalists and people
00:32:05.920who care for the earth. I mean, you see this all the time at wildlife refuges, for example,
00:32:10.320you know, which are, I mean, they're wildlife refuges. You know, they're places where wildlife
00:32:14.500should theoretically be safe, you know, yet managers have beavers trapped out of there
00:32:18.880because they just feel like beaver dam building and pond creation doesn't jive with the vision
00:32:24.900for managing this land. You know, there's this idea that at refuges where kind of the primary
00:32:30.120value is creating waterfowl habitat, you know, it's like, well, we humans know, we know how to
00:32:35.360breed ducks, you know, we know how to move water on the landscape and create these fantastic duck
00:32:39.760ponds. Never mind that, you know, that beavers and waterfowl have been inextricably linked for
00:32:46.040millions of years, you know, that these rodents have been creating fantastic, fantastic duck
00:32:50.320ponds. And there's, you know, this amazing wealth of research showing that waterfowl benefits
00:32:54.540tremendously from beaver presence. Yet, because we as humans think we can do it better, we trap
00:33:00.520out these animals that could be, you know, that could be creating habitat for us for free. And we
00:33:06.140do it at wildlife refuges, again, which I think is just so bizarre and ironic and sort of indicative
00:33:11.340of the way we interact with the natural world. So, you know, a lot of what my book is about and
00:33:15.920a lot of what beaver believers that the scientists who are increasingly working with beavers think
00:33:21.960about is, you know, how can we let the rodent do the work is sort of the mantra of lots of
00:33:26.480these engineers now saying, okay, this animal does this work instinctively, right? It creates ponds,
00:33:33.280it creates wetlands, it captures sediment, it filters out water pollution, it does all of these
00:33:38.400really incredibly valuable services for us. And again, it does them for free. And it does them
00:33:43.020better than we can do them because it's been doing it you know it's been doing this instinctively
00:33:46.860um for millions of years you know so how can we you know sort of step back a little bit
00:33:51.960and rely on these animals to create some of this great habitat without you know spending billions
00:33:58.100of dollars doing it ourselves and uh you know i love i love that idea of sort of being humble
00:34:03.360basically i mean to me that i mean to me that's that's the lesson of of beaver work more than
00:34:07.260anything else it's just humility in the face of of this other species that uh you know that that
00:34:12.640does this work so well? And again, stepping back and facilitating beavers, allowing beavers to do
00:34:18.600their thing rather than micromanaging them, I think is a really great way of thinking about
00:34:22.560beaver restoration. But of course, I mean, as you said, that's going to require us to rethink
00:34:28.460what a healthy ecosystem looks like, right? I mean, you know, we're all sort of accustomed
00:34:32.560to thinking about, you know, the perfect stream that you would see in like the fly fishing
00:34:36.620magazine, right? Which is, you know, this kind of this merry brook trickling over the rocks,
00:34:41.600you know, that you could, you could like wade right across. And, you know, of course, beavers
00:34:45.380don't create that kind of landscape, right? I mean, beavers create these, these broad sluggish
00:34:50.100multi-channel streams that, you know, look more like marshes or swamps or wetlands, you know,
00:34:55.260and there's, there's dead and dying trees everywhere. And, you know, it kind of smells
00:34:58.720like decay. You know, it's not exactly like the picture perfect ecosystem, or at least our
00:35:05.100conception of the picture perfect ecosystem. So, you know, we have, we have to, in some ways,
00:35:09.460readjust what we think an aquatic ecosystem should look like and include beavers in that
00:35:16.540conception. Thank you for that. I think this human supremacist mindset that guides us to say,
00:35:26.060oh, we are entitled to this type of stream, to this type of look, to this type of smell of the
00:35:33.620earth. When that isn't, not only is it not natural, it's actually not the most ecologically
00:35:39.480beneficial to anyone to be getting in the way of these things. And when you mentioned that in the
00:35:45.480wildlife refuges that beavers are being killed because of management, because of the way that
00:35:54.280people want to manage an ecosystem, it's really insanity. It's insanity that we think as humans
00:36:00.460that somehow we have a better idea of how to manage an ecosystem when looking back at history
00:36:07.160time and time and time and time and time again, we realize that most every time we get involved
00:36:13.540with thinking that we know best, we end up destroying so much. I mean, we wouldn't be in
00:36:17.980the sixth mass extinction at this point if we weren't doing something wrong. So I just think
00:36:23.580it's really insanity. And it's interesting to look through the lens of the beaver as this
00:36:29.160unrepresented creature, this relative who's done so much for us, and yet we are still at war with
00:36:35.220the beaver culturally. It's really unbelievable to learn about. And gosh, I just wonder, do you
00:36:41.200foresee a time when beavers will be able to live out their lives autonomously?
00:36:47.100That's a good question. Another sort of crazy way in which we manage beavers that I think gets
00:36:51.820at your question a little bit is the relationship between beavers and salmon, right? I mean,
00:36:56.100And, you know, we know that beavers create this amazing habitat, especially for juvenile salmon, which, you know, which need these nice slow water ponds and side channels and eddies and pools to shelter in, which has been shown time and time again that beavers are really integral to salmon production.
00:37:12.120Yet, you know, there's still lots of beaver trapping, beaver dam removal, basically to facilitate salmon passage, right?
00:37:20.240The idea is that somehow fish don't know how to get by beaver dams, you know, because, yeah, I don't, you know, I guess there's just this forgetting that, of course, historically we had hundreds of millions more beavers and millions and millions more salmon as well.
00:37:36.020And, you know, there's this ancient evolutionary relationship there.
00:37:40.100Of course, I mean, of course salmon know how to get past beaver dams.
00:37:42.900And it's been shown time and again that fish actually are very skilled at navigating beaver dams.
00:37:47.840And, you know, most of the time they aren't they aren't barriers at all.
00:37:52.100So, you know, it's just kind of another indication of how how, again, we don't recognize these ancient relationships.
00:37:59.620And, you know, we sort of think that, well, what the salmon need is beaver removal, not recognizing that, of course, these two species are really well linked.
00:38:07.280And as for whether, you know, beavers will will ever autonomously live out their lives.
00:38:11.000I mean, I think it I think it depends on where you are.
00:38:13.000You know, I think there I mean, there are lots of places now that, you know, that have a sort of a more more enlightened beaver consciousness, for lack of a better term, you know, places where these animals are being live trapped and relocated instead of just killed on site and where we're losing where we're using flow devices to solve some of these conflicts nonlethally.
00:38:32.360um so you know i think there's no question that that we are making progress on the on the beaver
00:38:37.000front and that you know there is this amazing sort of groundswell of support for beavers and
00:38:43.060recognition of how important they are you know again i mean that's i think that's more that's
00:38:47.300still more rule than exception you know there's still lots of of beaver trapping and destruction
00:38:52.700and um the overall trend for for beavers is certainly good but uh you know it's just very
00:38:59.520spatially patchy. You know, there are lots of places, again, where, you know, these animals
00:39:03.920are still not really welcomed and embraced on landscapes. So I hope that changes. I hope it
00:39:09.840continues to change. And, you know, I hope that my book can play some small role in facilitating
00:48:23.200They can't really build or create nice ponds because, you know,
00:48:26.540you can't spread water onto the floodplain if the stream is trapped deep within its bank.
00:48:30.740So it can be really hard for beavers to come back into some of these degraded systems.
00:48:35.780So the first step, I think, is you've got to get beavers back in there.
00:48:38.280One solution that works well in some cases to do that is installing these things called beaver dam analogs, which are basically human built beaver dams.
00:48:48.420They're sort of like beaver starter kits where you pound a few posts into the stream bed, leave a couple of willows in there.
00:48:54.160And that basically gives beavers a more stable starting point that they can build off of.
00:49:00.320So I think that's getting beavers back in there often through the use of beaver dam analogs.
00:49:05.020You know, in some cases you can, you can get beavers back in just by changing the land
00:49:08.800use, you know, in Nevada, for example, you know, in places that were really heavily grazed
00:49:13.800historically by cattle, where there was no vegetation for beavers to eat, you know, there's
00:49:18.560been, there's been a lot of beaver restoration success just by changing some of the grazing
00:49:24.140patterns, you know, by, by reducing some of that grazing pressure, you get streamside
00:49:28.400willows growing back and beavers have been able to, to follow those willows and show
00:49:34.760So I think that's a really critical part of the process is just getting the land use right, making sure there's enough vegetation there for them to eat and build off of.
00:49:45.320And, you know, if necessary, using these beaver dam analogs to sort of facilitate or direct their reestablishment.
00:49:52.220Once they're back in there, one of the cool things about beaver built habitats is how dynamic they are.
00:49:57.380This is a fantastic cycle that you go through, right, where beavers show up, they build a dam, they create a nice, big, deep pond.
00:50:04.900In that first phase, that pond is a really good environment for fish, for lots of waterfowl, you know.
00:50:11.460And then what happens gradually is sediment sort of filters out in the pond, and, you know, the pond begins to fill in.
00:50:18.040And it sort of becomes more of a wetland type environment that's really great for wetland
00:50:23.880dependent plant species and butterflies in many cases, you know, rely on the sedges that
00:50:48.040And, you know, eventually, you know, it begins to reforest a little bit. And then the cycle starts again, where, you know, where now the beavers show up again, and maybe the food resource has regrown enough for beavers to reestablish in a site that they had to leave.
00:51:03.480So I think that's one of the amazing things about these beaver-built habitats is they go through this incredible dynamic cycling where at each phase in the process, they're creating great habitat for a different set of species, you know, from these sort of pond and deep water-dependent species to wetland species to wet meadow species back to forest.
00:51:25.480And I think that cycle is really, really cool and incredible.
00:51:30.180But of course, to get there, you have to change land management enough to allow the beavers to return.
00:51:36.720It's amazing just to hear the domino effect after beavers come back to an area and just listening to all of the different creatures that can then find forage and home again.
00:51:50.100and I even think about how nearly half of endangered and threatened species in North
00:51:56.460America rely upon wetlands. So again, they need the beavers to come back. I really love imagining
00:52:04.040what can happen if we just support them. And another thing that you'd mentioned of how beavers
00:52:09.780support us is through climate change mitigation. And I want to hear a little bit more about that.
00:52:16.220You know, how does that actually work? How do beavers affect climate change?
00:52:22.240Yeah. So there's sort of, I mean, there's these great climate adaptation strategies, right? I mean, especially out here in the West, as the climate warms, more and more of a precipitation is falling as rain rather than snow, right? And what happens when it falls as rain is it just runs off the landscape immediately. And it's basically lost, you know, to productive use, to human use.
00:52:43.000what's so valuable for us is you know is that that snowpack which gradually melts over the
00:52:47.940course of the summer and fall and basically keeps streams hydrated throughout the entire year so
00:52:53.620you know of course as we as we lose that snowpack you know we're losing that great gradual time
00:52:59.300release runoff that's you know that's causing really really big problems not only for for
00:53:03.920farmers and and ranchers but also for fish and wildlife so you know getting beavers back in some
00:53:09.120these systems, storing some of these, some of this water, you know, creating some, some groundwater
00:53:13.780recharge and, and, you know, keeping these streams hydrated is, is pretty important in a lot of
00:53:19.020places, you know, and beavers aren't, I mean, look, they're not a silver bullet, obviously,
00:53:21.900they're not going to, you know, solve these drought problems by themselves, but, you know,
00:53:26.140they are one very valuable tool in the toolbox and also one really cheap tool in the toolbox,
00:53:30.820you know, they're the solution we can implement for not a whole lot of money. So that's the,
00:53:35.020that's kind of the adaptation piece i mean i mean the climate change mitigation piece you know is
00:53:39.600that we know that beavers store huge amounts of of carbon uh in their ponds and wetlands you know
00:53:45.180we know the wetlands in general are this you know this this amazing and vastly underappreciated
00:53:51.920carbon sink you know this this site of carbon sequestration as you know all of this you know
00:53:57.820all of this organic matter just settles out in ponds and wetlands you know they're just storing
00:54:02.600huge amounts of carbon. And, you know, what happens when beavers are removed from a site
00:54:07.360is, you know, all of those carbon-rich sediments are exposed to the air, and, you know, you
00:54:12.920basically release a lot of that carbon. And, you know, these beaver-built habitats go from being
00:54:18.420carbon sinks to carbon sources. So that's, I mean, that's one of the reasons that, you know,
00:54:22.920it's so critical that we get back, get beavers back in these systems and keep them there,
00:54:28.300because they're capturing huge amounts of carbon and they're releasing that carbon if they are
00:54:35.560eliminated from the system and the ponds dry up and all of those sediments are exposed.
00:54:40.860So beavers have a potentially really significant role to play in carbon sequestration and climate
00:54:46.840change mitigation if we let them play that role. Amazing. Well, goodness, I'm so appreciative of
00:54:54.200the time you've spent and clearly the heart that you put into this project. So Ben, thank you. And
00:54:58.900please feel free to close out this conversation in any way you see fit. I've definitely could
00:55:05.020probably talk for many more hours with you. But this has been such a good place to start and really
00:55:10.680have our listeners start to understand the complexities of what's happening to these
00:55:16.400magical beings. Yeah, you know, I mean, I would finish the conversation the same way that my
00:55:23.300book finishes, which is, you know, which is let, let the rodent do the work. You know, as I, as I
00:55:27.500said earlier, I mean, you know, we're not, we're not going to solve our environmental problems
00:55:31.380with beavers, but we're going to put a dent in them for sure. And, you know, and we can only do
00:55:35.600that by being humble in the face of this, this really remarkable rodent and, you know, letting
00:55:41.580it do some of the restoration work that we spend so much money attempting to do and do very
00:55:46.880imperfectly. Beavers do it better and they do it cheaper. And, you know, we should recognize that
00:55:51.460they're, they are our partners in restoration rather than our, our opponents. So, so let the
00:55:58.880road and do the work. Thank you for listening to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young.
00:56:24.800The music you heard today was by Fountain Sun.
00:56:28.940Our theme music is Silence Returns by Bo