I watched some documentary about an attempt to restore wetlands from a previously drained agricultural area that had been put into conservation.
the restoration project process was being frustrated by beavers, who kept building dams in old weirs and channels that would potentially cause catastrophic flooding if some old berms gave way when too much water was held back. there wasn’t enough money to make the huge changes to the earthworks necessary to diffuse the danger of catastrophe, nor was there enough labor to clear the beaver dams faster than the beavers could rebuild them.
so basically they had to figure out a behavioral way to get the beavers to want to build their dams where it would help the larger project, which ended up being through the use of speakers playing the sound of running water near where they wanted the beavers to build.
once they realized that, the conservation efforts rapidly converted the area back to wetlands at almost no cost by working with the beaver instincts and finding a common ground.
We need more of this awesome inter-species collab
There’s the famous reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone I suppose.
They manipulated the beavers into building in places that lacked an adequate flow of water. That’s not collaboration, instead manipulation.
and who manipulated you into being so compulsively contrarian that you will post factually incorrect and incoherent commentary with all the confident ignorance of a child at play? Walt Disney?
The Blackfeet Native American tribe taught me how they live with respect for and in harmony with nature. I certainly wasn’t manipulated into being taught.
By doubling down here they’d think you dumber than a beaver, not far from a “fucking colonizer”.
When did hexbear become so angry?
I am now completely convinced of your deep clout among the indigenous americans. so are beavers dumb then? making your “insult” that I am dumber than a beaver meaningful? is that an example of the respect you learned?
show us more of your great ancient wisdom, wise honky.
show us more of your… wisdom
At the beginning of hexbear we decided together to be the most understanding GLBTQ+ community on the internet and how we would do that.
The GLBTQ+ community has been attacked by most everyone for their whole lives. Now, under attack by the failures of governance, they band together in self-defense.
This is being abused by the lumpen in the hexbear community. They believe themselves righteous in their trolling. But, they’re not nearly as effective as we were on reddit. They won’t be as their reasoning is flawed.
If there’s a vanguard still present then there will soon be a struggle session.
For you, personally, I recommend a piece of mushroom chocolate in the forest.
That’s all the time I can sacrifice for you, comrade. I’m sure you understand on a human level.
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Yes haha yes! One of my personal interests is “engineering WITHIN nature” (ie mostly what can we “unfuck” to an improved state of balance) and that can involve lots of beavers! 🦫 anyway enjoy some of my favorite beav-sites! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_drop https://yewtu.be/watch?v=rrOE-m7sX9E
https://qcnr.usu.edu/beaver-restoration/partnering-with-beaver https://yewtu.be/watch?v=2_cml_cXPmE
https://www.wlfw.org/natures-engineers-how-beavers-boost-streamflows-and-restore-habitat/
https://www.fs.usda.gov/about-agency/features/firefighting-beavers
https://emilyfairfaxscience.com/research/firebeavers/ https://www.nasw.org/article/let-beavers-do-work-fighting-wildfire-one-dam-time
https://www.fws.gov/media/beaver-restoration-guidebook
https://www.beaverinstitute.org/get-beaver-help/damaged-streams/
excellent links! I saw the doc in a weird group trip situation, so I didn’t get a chance to learn the title but it was riveting as a soil ecologist with a long interest in prairies and their environmental history.
it was also years ago, so my memory hasn’t sharpened, but there was commentary/discussion on how much of the prairie lands of the Midwestern US had extensive wetland networks that were constructed and maintained by beavers prior to the Columbian Exchange and that the depth of soil organic matter in the now channelized and drained “Grain Belt” came from extensive periods of soil flooding, building up organic matter faster than it could cycle.
the others in the audience were just tourists, so few of them cared, but I was having my mind blown. fuckin’ beavers are the expert terraforming heroes, larding the lean earth.
There’s a ton of hoopla in my town about some old busted dams that need to be removed for safety reasons and the way that might affect the small lakes they created when built 100 years ago. I have been saying all along they just need to pop a couple beavers in there (who are having a slow comeback in my region already) and let them do it.
rodent STRONGNo gods, no specs, no concrete fucking dams
Field-fit engineering stays winning
I love everything about this story.
One of the things that I like about this story is that one of the very good reasons it takes a long time to plan a dam is that you need to keep an eye on the environmental impact on animals, such as beavers.
They didn’t have to go back to beaver congress to ask for funding, or make sure the correct beaver-reps’ fail children get the construction contract. Or they didn’t have to spend 80 beaver-hrs building a more profitable beaver-project before they could do something that actually benefits their beaver-community. Or sit around arguing if climate change is too scawey for some beavers to engage with. Maybe it’s because there’s no beaver-bourgeoisie 🤔
Beavers: “what are you, silly? I’m still gonna send it!”
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Timberborn playthrough is going well.
if I could be an animal I would want to be a beaver. they’re such cool animals, definitely my favorite of keystone species
this video has some cool footage from inside a lodge, including how other animals hunker down in the lodge with beavers in a synergistic way https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyNA62FrKCE
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
BOBER
joint beaver-orca-JDPON alliance when
But at what cost?
Probably about 14 beaver × days of labor and an assortment of free and easily recyclable rocks, trees, and mud. In the US we pay our mentally handicapped about food server wage and heavily discriminate against undocumented workers. Even though it’d cost us $1.2 million to do it ourselves, the best we can do for these beavers is about three-fiddy.
Tree-fiddy *
they were having trouble getting it through red tape restoring beavers to northern UK and then somehow they got in on their own, and being a critical protected species nothing was to be done about them
