How Beavers Are Helping Fight Climate Change

hey what up world miles best here journalist host and lover not a fighter of snacks yes fires droughts carbon emissions all words my uncle uses instead of saying that he tooted they're also just really bad for the Earth but they can also all be reduced with yes you guessed it the help of beavers yes that's right beavers beavers beavers we all thought beavers were just you know ugly little rats that could hold tennis rackets but jokes on us because those dudes are the unsung heroes of climate change and they're doing it all while also being adorable look at them and beaver height came to an all-time high over the last year's global warming has gotten more severe States like California for example have proposed to invest a little more than three million dollars in a new Beaver Dam restoration program all because these little dudes are literally saving the planet but some people seem to hesitate to get behind beavergate so today we're asking why are beavers the climate change Heroes we need right now all right so let's get into it first and foremost how do these toothy mother truckers actually help the environment big picture beavers are basically like water benders for our ecosystem let's meet Dr Emily Fairfax she's an eco-hydrologist who studies the way that beavers can make Landscapes more resilient to climate change yes her actual job is to study beavers now she explained to me that beavers are basically climate engineers and little firefighters all for free so when beavers move into a landscape they really need to make a pawn for themselves beavers are very awkward on land I deeply relate to that and any predator can easily pick them off so beaver's number one goal is to make a pond for themselves to live in that means building a dam and digging a bunch of little canals out from their ponds and really what they're doing is slowing down the water which benefits them but it also has a huge amount of benefits for us as well so that slowed down water has time to sink into the soil to spread out into the floodplain and so when you have a drought even if that drought's going on for year after year there's so much stored water in the earth that there's plenty of water for the plants they can stay green and healthy which is really important when you have something that could start a fire the fire is going to burn whatever's driest and easiest to burn and in these Beaver ponds everything has stayed so wet that it's just not easy to burn experts say that beavers help produce the worst impacts of droughts and floods by Holding Back Essential water that otherwise would run off or just dry up and while essential water Yes sounds like a brand sponsored by cardi B this means that it's water the environment needs to stay healthy and thriving it's kind of like the environment's self-care routine carbon is a big buzzword in climate stuff and there is a lot of research showing that Beaver ponds can be massive carbon sinks it looks like beavers are not only good at dealing with the effects of climate change but also the mitigations they can suck that carbon out of the atmosphere to slow down climate change and beavers are particularly special because they're a keystone species which can be any organism from animals to plants to bacteria and fungi and more or less they hold a habitat together have you ever seen like an archway you know what I'm saying and it's just you have these tiny little pigs and then there's that one in the middle you're like you're not really doing much you know what I mean you don't have much weight on you but if we took that one out the whole thing would come crumbling down and that's what a keystone species is like if they left or they died off the ecosystem the biodiversity of that ecosystem would look very different it may not even be able to adapt to the changes of the keystone species not being beavers are just one species doing this kind of important climate change work others include elephants wolves otters starfish bees and there's so many more while beavers are maybe getting some play now that wasn't always the case for our cute rodent homies for centuries European cultures thought beavers were just pests who they only valued for their fur and at one point beavers were hunted nearly to Extinction offer these ugly hats I mean look at it I mean my scalp is just itchy just thinking about it man and to make matters worse if we weren't hunting them we were gentrifying their neighborhoods humans parked our little hipster booties in these streams and in the wetlands and that caused Beaver populations to nosedive by as much as 90 percent so beavers used to be super abundant on this continent there was anywhere from 100 to 400 million beavers here before the European for trade and that means that those beavers were living in coexistence with all of the people that were also on this continent before European colonization so there was a really good balance between human interests human needs and natural Beaver activities and Landscape occupancy until the fur trade now this long-standing idea that beavers are pissed is still happening to this day Oregon for example has beavers registered as a predator even though they're strict vegetarians so they can be hunted and trapped on private land across Oregon with few restrictions now the irony of course being that you know Oregon is the beaver State it's basically the State's mascot they're on flags and license plates but they can't be on your property huh make it make sense in this strong response to Beavers is kind of understandable if we think about the fact that you know most folks probably don't even remember them being around in the first place so a lot of places that used to have beavers in the past haven't had them for maybe 200 250 years or so like they were wiped out in the first wave of colonization almost entirely and so people don't remember what the landscape looked like with beavers and their grandparents don't remember and their great grandparents don't remember part of that stems from a term I've heard referred to as ecological Amnesia and so then when a beaver comes back and it changes this um honestly unhealthy little stream into a big messy Wetland they feel like that's wrong and they feel like they should fix it because it's not how things used to be and so it cannot be correct but despite some haters indigenous communities here in the states have always known what was up many native tribes have clearly understood that the work beavers do naturally benefits humans as well even today tribes are working with local governments to help restore Beaver populations they're doing things like include Beaver relocation and building artificial log jams to encourage beavers to come back and it's this difference in perspective that can change how and why we approach beavers and that's how I came across Frankie Myers he's the vice chairman to the yurok tribe here in California he focuses his work on a variety of issues impacting indigenous folks with an emphasis on environment protection and nature restoration I think one of the key things that non-venon-religious Community can really learn from what tribal folks have been practicing since time immemorial is this idea that we are a part of the world around us and it really seems like a really simple kind of concept but you'd be surprised on how difficult it is to kind of push this idea through towards implementation this idea that humans are actually a part of the world um not you know Superior to it not below it but a part of it it makes me think is there a way for us humans to be the robin to their Batman the Jarvis to their Iron Man honestly humans and beavers are more like frenemies than partners in crime which is odd since we're so similar we're both mammals I mean they even have front doors at their houses we 've got front doors I mean we're not all that different in order for rice to live sustainably and alongside beavers now we have to do what we as indigenous people always have which is live with them build better build smarter build in a way that's adapted to our environment instead of forcing our environment to adapt to us sharing a territory with an animal that can also shape Landscapes and direct water flows like we do challenges our desire to be in control but where can we find that compromise instead of you know defaulting to man over nature and just over engineering things like humans tend to do I mean think about it beavers are just doing what they hear on this Earth to do something that people have recognized for years is necessary to human nature balance and states and governments are finally starting to realize and help animals like beavers do their thing but what do you think should we do more to partner with animals like beavers who could help us fight climate change let us know in the comments below oh and if you liked this video you should check out our video on our endangered species worth saving or Can wild animals and humans coexist in cities let us know what you think as always I'm your host miles peace out [Music]

Channel: Above The Noise

Views: 3,645

Keywords: Above the Noise, KQED, PBS, PBS Digital Studios, Myles Bess, beavers, climate change, beavers and climate change, beaver dam, biodiversity, drought, wildlife, beaver dams, keystone species and their role in ecosystem, keystone species, indigenous people and climate change, ecology, wildlife conservation, animals and climate change, carbon sink and carbon sequestration, beavers climate change, beavers and wildfires, global warming, ecosystem engineers, beavers ecosystem engineers

Id: juFtc_xAjKY

Length: 8min 42sec (522 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 30 2022