A nod to firefighting beavers on this Earth Day

Today – April 22nd, 2024 – is Earth Day, a day designated back in 1970 to both promote and preserve our planet. It’s home, after all!

EarthDay.org has numerous ongoing initiatives, from The Canopy Project (aimed at reforesting areas in dire need of rehabilitation) to End Plastics (aimed at eliminating single-use plastics and the copious amounts of trash and pollution they cause) to helping educate kids on climate change and environmental understanding. If you’ve got a spare dollar or two, you can use today’s Earth Day platform to donate to their cause, helping them with their push towards a more environmentally friendly society.

If you’re looking for a good parable to prompt your donation, can I interest you in firefighting beavers?

As the Cameron Peak Fire, East Troublesome Fire, and Mullen Fire all raged during the summer of 2020, nearly 600,000 acres of forest and meadow land were burned across the Rocky Mountains of central Colorado and southern Wyoming. Severe drought, high winds, and deadfall from an era of pine beetle flourishing set the stage for a tinderbox that exploded that summer, and as the mountain west began to pick up the pieces from the blazes, numerous studies began about not just the origin of the fires, but how the environment did (and did not) fare against them.

One study – produced by the Geological Society of America (GSA) and led by University of Minnesota Twin Cities ecohydrologist Emily Fairfax – zeroed in on beavers. As it turns out, the little fuzzballs and their self-created habitats stand up against the megafires we’ve seen explode across the dried-out American west better than any other habitats, and it’s high time we started realizing what they could have been doing to help us all along.

The basics of the study are somewhat obvious: beavers establish homes on water, and water and fire simply do not mix. The deeper look, though, revealed the slightly less obvious: beavers naturally help thin forests when they cut down trees to build their own dams and lodges, and that thinning helps slow the voracity with which fires burn as they approach beaver habitats.

On top of that, the dampness of the soil where beavers dam streams (and form ponds) helps stem the advancement of fires since, as we noted in the ‘obvious’ section, water and fire simply do not mix. So in an landscape across the American west that has forever been a perfect area for beaver populations, it makes sense that we should begin to recognize that they don’t just live there, they help us live there, too.

Bay Stephens of the Colorado Sun took a more in-depth look at the GSA’s study, and while it’s a good read from start to finish, one note in particular stood out to me:

North America is home to only 10% of its pre-settlement beaver population. Before the fur trade of the 1500s-1850s nearly extirpated beavers, scientists estimate the land held 100 million to 400 million. And a beaver dominated landscape would have looked drastically different than what is thought of today as “pristine.”

10%. Ten percent.

In a time before western expansion, there were no concrete dams built to hold back millions upon millions of gallons of fresh water for drinking, cooking, and an overwhelming amount of agriculture. The dams that did exist, however, were on the smaller waterways on a much broader scale, built by beavers who merely slowed the flow of water through watersheds bit by bit instead of blocking it altogether in huge reservoirs. The result, of course, was wetter soil patches at each of their strategic locations, and a whole lot more built-in fire breaks wherever they were.

There’s a whole lot more that has gone in to the more rapid occurance of megafires in today’s American west, but it’s hard not to walk away from this study without acknowledging that our ancestors’ thirst for beaver pelts is still playing a big part, too. The era of felt – and the top hats that came with it – is impacting the home insurance market to this very day.

While Save the Beavers! isn’t one of EarthDay.org’s initiatives, there are at least several movements across the American west to do just that. US Fish & Wildlife documented how the Wenatchee River valley (and the salmon population) has benefitted from the reintroduction of beavers in that portion of Washington state, and Regeneration.org has an entire project dedicated to replicating that process all over the continent (and beyond!).

Don’t try to high-five a beaver the next time you see one, since that would be a terrible, idiotic idea. Maybe tip your cap to them for their service, though – as long as it’s not one of those old-timey felt top hats.