Wanted: Beavers, not Horses

Photo by Mary Beth Atwood from krqe.com

Texas is on fire. About 120,000 acres are burned or burning, about 700 homes have been lost thus far. According to the Texas Forest Service website, fire fighters spent the labor day holiday responding to 22 new fires.
Like the "megafires" described in a recent Audubon Magazine article (and discussed in an earlier blog here), these conflagrations degrade ecosystems and cause human suffering. When people suffer, animals suffer. That includes species often privileged or idealized, like horses. The two-year drought in Texas has turned grass and hay into kindling. Animals do not have enough to eat; farmers and ranchers have nothing to harvest and store. Hay is imported from states like Iowa, but that's not the same as having adequate grass growing where the animals live. More and more bone-thin horses are left with rescue groups, as  reported by ABC news earlier this summer. The same circumstances that lead to horse abandonment or surrender also inhibit adoption or horses restored to health. Some rescue groups, like Brighter Days near San Antonio, fear that they cannot take in any more animals.
While Texas and the nation struggle with immediate responses to fire and drought, other long-term solutions are up for consideration.
Some ranchers in rain-starved regions would like to see beaver return. This may seem like an odd longing, especially since beaver are often seen as pests whose constructions block trout streams, boating channels, or drainage lines.

"I know you want me."

As reported by a recent Wall Street Journal article, "in many states, it's legal to shoot a beaver on private land." However, the same article explains that beavers are excellent restorers of wetlands. As one conservancy director explains, "We can spend $200,000 putting wood into a stream, cabling down logs. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Put in a colony of beavers and it always works." So ranchers in places like Wyoming and Washington want to bring beavers back to places where they had been banished. What beaver dams retain can mitigate the impact of a dry season and provide drinking water for cattle and wildlife, and the subsurface water table fluctuates less. So now beavers are live-trapped elsewhere to be transferred to ranch lands that have some water source. Other species, from cougar and moose in the North and songbirds about anywhere, seem to rebound where beavers have created wetlands.
Texas is not currently in a situation where beavers can save the day. But the re-evaluation of beavers suggests that holistic approaches to ecosystems are not just for the dreams of abstract nature-lovers but for those who make a living from the land.

Dam, it's gone!