COLORADO — The humble beaver could become one of America's hardest working allies in the race to adapt to climate change.
France, Provence Alpes Cote d'Azur, Camargue, Eurasian beaver, Castor fiber, eating grassCOLORADO — The humble beaver could become one of America’s hardest working allies in the race to adapt to climate change.
“The ones that are most directly sort of in our eyesight right now is the beavers’ ability to protect ecosystems during droughts, during floods, during wildfires, during extreme disturbances. And in those patches of habitat that they're protecting, there's a huge amount of biodiversity”In addition to storing water, Fairfax’s research has shown that areas with beaver dams are more resilient to wildfires because the plants and trees are so wet they don’t burn.
“There's a lot of streams and headwaters to the Colorado River that used to run perennially, year-round, that we now see have stopped. And so we might be able to, as we do enough of these, turn some of those stream flows back on on an annual basis. And seeing those regular additions throughout the year could have huge benefits to the system as a whole,” said Marcus Selig, chief conservation officer with the National Forest Foundation.
“Our big dream is that we can restore every headwater, every watershed that feeds into the Colorado River on national forest lands. And so we're working on creating that pipeline of projects right now,” he added. Similar projects are growing around the country, some with support from states or the federal government. California has dedicated $1.6 million to hire staff to start similar projects in the state.
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