Beavers: A rodent success story

time was beavers were indeed the makings of fur  coats to protect against the cold but there's   a lot more to the beaver than that turns out  eager is an understatement here's Luke Burbank   Leila Phillip remembers the exact moment it  happened she was walking her dog near her home   in Connecticut and we were about right over there  and she froze and next thing I knew there was this   crack I thought a gun had gone off the sound was  actually a beaver slapping its tail on the water   to let her know she was in its neighborhood I  looked and I saw oh my God it's filling with   water and then I saw trees were coming down over  there it was just incredible it was one of the   most amazing things I'd ever seen and it was a  beavers making their Pond that was the moment   Philip went from not thinking about beavers very  much to becoming more or less Obsessed the result   her book beaverland how one weird rodent made  America it's just incredible the change that   they bring into the land and this is why they're  called ecosystem engineers and in creating their   own ecosystems beavers actually do a lot for  humans slowing down water flow and creating wider   wetter environments it's so dry out there that's  fuel like that is fire Fuel and then you get   into here and I mean the water it's not going to  burn Emily Fairfax is assistant professor at the   University of Minnesota where she studies beaver  often in the bone dry and sometimes Wildfire prone   West if you look at these plants if you pinch  them they are so full of water the tissues are   green and Lush and they're not withering they're  not crinkly and like that's hard to burn you don't   want to start a fire with wet material and this is  obviously very wet you're pretty certain there are   beavers here because of course we have a dam we  have a lodge but we also have what did you just   find I just found a beaver poop uh and so these  really highlight what beavers eat and what they   don't eat because if you look carefully it's just  plant material it's just sawdust like a little   sawdust marshmallow and it's pretty fresh so we  know the beavers have been here working recently   because they're leaving poops in the water you  really just handed me a beef welcome to the field kind of Woody yeah Fairfax says if we could see  the California of 500 years ago with plentiful   Beaver we'd see a Greener landscape that would  burn less easily pre-european fur trade the   estimate is that there were between 100 million  and 400 million beavers in North America and   for perspective that's like about a beaver per  kilometer of habitable stream and that's like   that's like squirrels they were everywhere but  beaver fur was incredibly valuable to the Western   explorers of North America Beaver felt was the  Gore-Tex of its day everybody needed a beaver hat   do you need to think of Mr Darcy in London with  the top hat George Washington with his tricornered   hat that was made out of beaver felt Beaver felt  was incredibly valuable Native Americans hunted   Beaver but in a way that allowed their populations  to still Thrive that all changed when John Jacob   Aster landed in New York John Jacob Astor comes  over you know his famous story of him coming over   with seven flutes thinking he's going to start  a music business he overhears on board the ship   people talking about fantastic sums they can make  trading this item in London that they can get   in North America for nothing and he figures out  it's beaver and that's the beginning of America's   first multi-millionaire in just 100 years the  population of North American Beaver dropped to   near Extinction levels leading to all kinds of  attempts to rebuild their numbers including some   truly bizarre ideas the plane makes a careful  approach ready for the drop in the 1950s Idaho   Wildlife officials launched operation Geronimo  parachuting almost 80 beavers into the back   country hoping they'd repopulate and sure enough  it and other less high-flying reintroduction   efforts seem to be working according to Leila  Philip the beaver is one of North America's   great success stories they're a conservation  comeback story and that's why we have beavers   now and beavers has this great new role to play  because they can help us with every environmental   problem we have that's being accelerated by  climate change fire and drought and flood that's   right it may seem counter-intuitive but beaver  dams actually reduce catastrophic flooding by   sending more water into the ground still of course  not everyone loves a beaver pond springing up on   their property or near their kids baseball field  but there are non-lethal ways to co-exist with our   furry neighbors says Philip like something called  a pond leveler well it's really beautifully simple   you basically put a pipe through the dam it's  like a permanent leak in the dam and you lower the   level of the pond meanwhile back at that original  Pond the one that got Leila Phillip so obsessed   those beavers have moved on leaving behind  an ecosystem better than they found it   something we humans might do well to consider  ourselves even this Beaver Meadow is so much   richer with life and more full of water  than before so it's pretty remarkable

Channel: CBS Sunday Morning

Views: 105,183

Keywords: CBS Sunday Morning, CBS News, news, beavers, rodent, Leila Philip, Emily Fairfax, ecosystem, north america

Id: FPwBcyaXih8

Length: 5min 59sec (359 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 17 2023