11/06/2019
Repost from my bad-ass mom .works: ————————————————Some of you may know but when I am not putting energy into food systems I am working in water systems. In the west water resilience is very real and beavers are a huge piece in this. Our son is on the front line of working with these, often exiled, engineers to retain sequester both water and carbon. Let’s be clear the only help they need is for us to give them space to do that. In this photo he is holding a yearling who is a member of a family that had to be moved as the wetland they create and maintain is being bulldozed and drained for development. This mind, took months of red tape because in Oregon beavers can be killed all day long but cannot be moved—alive. This family is now settling in to a spot in public land the thing is which is wonderful but the thing is these existing wetlands need to be retained for so many reasons. As it gets drained we also lose habitat and all the groundwater recharge that is happening.
In the latest issue of he and I collaborated on an article.
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“Beaver Dams recharge groundwater. As that flow dried, the ponds still continued to hold water under the beaver’s careful tending. Those ponds became the area’s sole water source, and wildlife congregated there like they were waterholes in the Serengeti...This event hints at what could be possible if beaver were back on the landscape. For areas that are struggling with drought and loss of biodiversity, partnering with this little wetland builder is perhaps the best way to get resiliency back into our watersheds....These unassuming rodents, first viewed as a natural resource to be extracted from the landscape for their fur, could help mitigate the effects of climate change,” Jakob Shockey (of ) writes in “Building Resiliency with Beaver,” an essay co-written by Kirsten K. Shockey (of .works) in Issue 35::BUILD.
