Beavers: Nature's landscape architects

2019-07-12T15:54:00-04:00

In California and Oregon, beavers are enhancing wetlands that are critical breeding habitat for salmonids, amphibians, and waterfowl. In Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico, environmental groups have partnered with ranchers and farmers to encourage beaver activity on small streams. Watershed advocates in California are leading a campaign to have beavers removed from the state’s non-native species list, so that they can be managed as a keystone species rather than a nuisance.

Writing in Places Journal, landscape designer Stacy Passmore explores the amazing landscapes beavers create when they are allowed to fulfill their natural role as environmental engineers.

More and more, beavers and humans have become partners in reshaping the landscapes of the American west, where, Passmore reports, the aquatic mammals have been deployed to remediate defunct mines, re-wild marginal lands, and boost biodiversity as they restore wetlands and other riparian landscapes.

The beavers, according to Passmore, are "subversive animals are rewriting the landscape, changing its topography, without hardly anybody registering the change."

It's likely that in the future, humans and beavers will work together more and more, as climate change reshapes the world's natural environments. But dont count on them to fix climate change. Passmore writes: "As beavers are 'reintroduced' to more areas, we should remember that we cannot restore historic conditions. We must conceptualize a mes...

California drought sucks San Jose's Guadalupe river dry

2015-08-10T13:44:00-04:00

The river that runs through America's 10th-largest city has dried up, shriveling a source of civic pride that had welcomed back trout, salmon, beavers and other wildlife after years of restoration efforts. Over the past two months, large sections of the Guadalupe have become miles of cracked, arid gray riverbed. Fish and other wildlife are either missing or dead, casualties of California's relentless drought.

The Guadalupe River had undergone a massive revitalization effort in 2005, when the Army Corps of Engineers and the Santa Clara Valley Water District spent $350 million on a huge park and garden by the river, as part of a larger flood control project. Despite this very recent improvement in the riparian corridor, the drought has proved too much to keep it flowing – the district's reservoir levels are so low that water managers simply can't afford to release water from the tributaries into the river as frequently, now leading to the dry beds.

Waterways throughout the state are stressed by the drought, and any infrastructural adjustments to rivers will require a future-focused attention to drought conditions. Last week, news broke that Frank Gehry would be leading a master plan of the entire 52-mile stretch of the Los Angeles River, as well as a revitalization effort, but specific plans as related to the drought are not yet available.

With water in such limited supply, letting the Guada...

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Beavers: Nature's landscape architects

California drought sucks San Jose's Guadalupe river dry