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Banished to a remote Idaho valley, beavers created a lush wetland
- gsky 3y agoI feed birds. It's just amazing watching them eating and drinking water. Everyone demands rights but not many care about the responsibilities like taking care of nature. Sad reality
- hutzlibu 3y agoThe idea is, that nature can take care of its own quite well, if left in peace and bird feeding can be actually harmful, as you bring in more nutrients artificially with the result, that an ecosystem than has more birds, than it can sustain on its own, which can lead to local collapse of that ecosystem (too much duck shit in the lake for example).
- gsky 3y agoGiven the share of forestation, droughts and pesticide use in agri sector i do not think leaving them to their fate is not a good idea.
- hutzlibu 3y agoWell, that's why I added "if left in peace". And if you want to do something good for birds, ideally you do something good for insects. Otherwise it strongly depends what kinds of birds you feed.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago>Well, that's why I added "if left in peace". I think a reasonable reading of the first comment understood all that.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoPractically speaking, it can depend on garden design; fill it with concrete / slabs or fake grass will discourage any nature, but plants and healthy soil will encourage it. We went from a green-looking (ivy walls) but ultimately desert-like back yard to a pretty lush haven for birds, bugs, bees and butterflies. And the occasional mouse or frog, but I think the cats bring those in.
- bigbillheck 3y agoVery few parts of nature have been left in peace.
- BurningFrog 3y agoBirdfeeding is a lowkey domestication of birds.
- uoaei 3y agoMan belongs to the world, the world does not belong to man.
- awestroke 3y agoTaking care of nature? Are you aware that birds are able to feed themselves without assistance from humans?
- myshpa 3y agoTrue, we should let them search for food, especially when there's enough food around. When food is scarce (winter) it may be a different story, though. And water fountains in the summer are good not only for the birds, but for other wildlife as well.
- dividedbyzero 3y agoOnly if you leave them enough of an ecosystem to do so. That's probably the most important part of "taking care of nature", and one we're currently failing at terribly.
- adammarples 3y agoThe US has lost about 25% of its birds in the last 50 years
- lancesells 3y agoWhat if I limit your food source and make you leave your house / apartment? There's a chance you would need some assistance.
- micromacrofoot 3y agowe’ve destroyed much of their habitats
- myshpa 3y ago> not many care about the responsibilities like taking care of nature Our farming practices (deforestation, pesticide/herbicide use, insect die offs ...) and diet preferences are driving many species, including birds, to extinction. We could significantly reduce the damage by restructuring our diets; however, not many people seem to care about that. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26231772/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26231772/ Biodiversity conservation: The key is reducing meat consumption https://www.birdlife.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/SOWB2022_EN_compressed.pdf https://www.birdlife.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/SOWB2022... 1 in 8 bird species is facing extinction https://www.salon.com/2020/08/18/the-pesticide-that-caused-bee-colonies-to-collapse-is-killing-birds-now/ https://www.salon.com/2020/08/18/the-pesticide-that-caused-b... The pesticide that caused bee colonies to collapse is killing birds now https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2023/april/almost-half-of-all-uk-bird-species-in-decline.html https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2023/april/almost-half-o... Almost half of all UK bird species in decline https://emagazine.com/bird-population-declines/ https://emagazine.com/bird-population-declines/ Bird Populations Declining Fast Across North America https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/2-out-of-3-north-american-bird-species-face-extinction-how-we-can-save-them https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/2-out-of-3-north-american-... 2 out of 3 North American bird species face extinction https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2216573120 https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2216573120 Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe
- ETH_start 3y agoWe could raise consumption while expanding the area of protected wetlands by building more nuclear power plants to power vertical farms, and expanding industry and energy harvesting outside of Earth. This avoids having to convince people to deny themselves their preferred foods, and arguably, reduce their quality of life, to protect natural habitats. It's a better strategy for both humanity and nature.
- vegetablepotpie 3y agoSomeone posted a research paper [1] a few months ago that says that due to energy consumption, the use of vertical farming doesn’t provide a net space savings for caloric dense foods. I’m curious what you think of that paper and what it would change about your suggested solution. [1] https://raghavan.usc.edu/papers/smartfarm-limits21.pdf https://raghavan.usc.edu/papers/smartfarm-limits21.pdf
- re-thc 3y agoIs there a light novel version somewhere? That title has striking similarities…
- johnnymorgan 3y agoIf you think beavers can be destructive, wait until meet a Fisher. Literal Rodents of unusual size and very ill tempered
- mcv 3y agoI have no idea what fishers do, and Wikipedia doesn't help. Could you tell us more?
- danielskogly 3y agoLooks like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_(animal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_(animal) Although I'm not sure what OP refers to, other than them being a top predator.
- mcv 3y agoAs I alluded to, I'd found that page already. I'd like to know what they do that's more destructive than beavers flooding your land. Why single out the fisher like that? I mean, wolves and foxes can wreak havoc on farm animals, but at least they don't turn your land into a swamp.
- pvaldes 3y agoIt is cute indeed, like a big polecat, and "can be" tamed (As any other mustelid they can bite hard if they want or are treated bad). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ic7FyZV0M0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ic7FyZV0M0 A healthy ecosystem provides enough shelter to the preys for sustaining both preys and predator. It does not modify the ecosystem in the way than a beaver does. Not even close.
- smcl 3y agoThey do look very cute, as do all long-skinny forest or river animals (pine marten, weasels, stoats, otters)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- MarthaMoorman 3y ago[flagged]
- praveen9920 3y ago> NASA is now supporting efforts to introduce more beavers to the landscape, I’m not familiar with the area but wouldn’t this impact local ecosystem? In my opinion more of anything is bad
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoIt depends. In this case, wouldn't the beavers have settled there organically if it wasn't for human intervention? Would the water level be higher or lower?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sophacles 3y agoThe local ecosystem that was full of beavers until the last couple hundred years when people removed in a failed attempt to far the place? I think it will do ok.
- stetrain 3y ago> “Prior to beaver trapping, beaver dams were just about everywhere in the West. So what we’re attempting to do is to bring beaver dam densities back to historic levels where possible”
- BurningFrog 3y ago"Less of Everything!" -- The Battle Cry of 2023
- valianteffort 3y agoHow can beaver dams be considered good for the environment but man-made dams get so much resistance despite producing some of the cleanest energy and reducing carbon emissions? Surely humans know how to design/divert waterways better than a beaver.
- criley2 3y ago"The environment" is a really big subject. It's like saying "How can chemotherapy be considered bad when it actually helps cure cancer?" You can see how in this statement things are confusing because chemotherapy is very dangerous and harmful, but in a bigger picture, it's very helpful and life-saving. A man-made dam is good for the global environment when it offsets coal burning. A man-made dam is terrible for the local ecosystem when it completely obliterates the local ecosystem by putting it underwater. It also has much more surface area for evaporation than rivers leading to water loss. They also promote extreme anerobic bacteria compared to rivers causing dramatic increase in greenhouse gas production in the water. Dams also prevent rivers from delivering silt, nutrients, and other things that help Ocean ecosystems including reducing the oceans ability to sink carbon. They also can contribute to earthquakes. Finally, once they fall into disrepair, they become a huge dangerous hazard and most countries do not want to pay to maintain and decommission. So is a dam good or bad? It becomes a question of the net benefit. For the chemotherapy, we say that there is a net positive benefit. For man-made dams, there is a current debate and I won't say what I think. And finally Beaver dams are often considered good because they are not large-scale. They don't flood a whole region, they just slowly turn a small area into a wetland. They slow down fast-moving streams, reduce erosion, provide buffers against storm surges and help control flooding. Beavers can be a keystone species and a healthy beaver population has a dramatically positive effect on the local ecosystem.
- myshpa 3y agoGood points. Human dams are also an obstacle to migration and cause habitat fragmentation.
- efitz 3y agoI’m going to coin the term “beaverforming”.
- mabbo 3y agoBeaver dams are a serious factor in flood prevention that we mostly removed from our world. A pond behind a small dam will swell up and hold water when it rains, slowly releasing the water downstream over time. Thousands of such dams add up, leading to a major rainstorm's water taking a longer time to fully dissipate into the rivers downstream. The same total water (almost) will go through the river, but with a lower peak load, and over a longer time. The rivers are less likely to burst their banks. Homes, towns, cities are saved massive damage. And as this article shows, the areas behind the dams stay wet much longer, reducing drought and fire risks. All we have to do is, when possible, let the beavers build their dams.
- woooooo 3y agoYeah, but the beavers don't consult with civil engineers on where to build the dams. It's an issue for rural roads that get eroded and washed out.
- mbreese 3y agoThe counter argument is that the civil engineers didn’t consult with the beavers on where to build their roads either. There’s going to be some give and take here. If you want the benefit from a natural solution (beavers), you’ll have to work around whatever that solution is.
- ilyt 3y agoOr learn to make artificial ones better
- GoldenRacer 3y agoAnd then you have to pay someone to maintain the artificial ones. That might be a better plan in some areas but certainly not all
- emrah 3y agoThis. Beavers have no agenda other than the instinct to build a dam where one is needed. I'd reroute roads if necessary
- stetrain 3y agoOne of my favorite recent games - Timberborn - is based on the concept of beaver civilization altering and improving the landscape. Recommended if you like sim/builder games.
- ianbicking 3y agoThese kinds of changes would really benefit from mosquito eradication. It looks lovely from above, and in a remote location of Idaho there's no one to care, but I'm sure it's absolutely teaming with mosquitoes, a kind of perfect habitat. And a perfect habitat for all sorts of other creatures and plants who bother no one. It's not just because of beaver trapping that this waterform has been so systematically eliminated; people go to great lengths to remove backwaters just because of mosquitoes. If we made mosquitoes extinct – not just the disease-carrying mosquitoes, but any that bite humans – I think we'd see attitudes change surprisingly quickly, a sudden peace in an ecological war has lasted millenia.
- r00fus 3y agoIf it isn’t mosquitos it’ll be gnats or any other biting/stinging insect. Fact is, removing insect biomass using neonicotinide insecticides has had major negative impacts on North American biodiversity.
- brnt 3y agoNeonicotinoids aren't likely to be ingested by insects that don't eat crops (such as mosquito's), aren't they?
- r00fus 3y ago"At field-realistic levels of pollution, neonicotinoids and fipronil generally have negative effects on physiology and survival for a wide range of non-target invertebrates in terrestrial, aquatic, marine and benthic habitats" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4284392/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4284392/
- ianbicking 3y agoIt's true that getting rid of mosquitoes won't bring peace between humans and insects. But it would help, and if we could make them extinct then we could avoid all the collateral damage that occurs due to our efforts at partial suppression. Insecticides do more harm than the insects they target do good, so if we could target individual species for extinction (obviously a technological feat, but within the realm of possibility) we'd ultimately have a more diverse and healthy ecology.
- lakomen 3y agoI visited the site, started reading, then got rudely interrupted by some pop up requesting donations. I then closed the site. Too bad one can't downvote posts.
- MarthaMoorman 3y ago[flagged]
- freedomben 3y agoI've lived in the mountain west much of my life, and have a fascination with 19th century US history. People nowadays would be shocked to discover how drastically we have altered the climate out here. To be clear, I'm not referring to traditional "climate change," I'm talking about human activity as a result of settling and taming this land. The amount of grass and trees in the west used to be decent, but the grass was grazed almost to extinction and the trees stripped from nearly everywhere except mountain passes by the pioneers and early settlers. There used to be large meadows and forests around in the valleys and mountain summits, but now they are barren wastelands. For a specific example, look up the history of Mountain Meadows. It has a major stain in history from the Mountain Meadows Massacre, but think about the landscape and climate. At the time it was a lush meadow with plentiful water, grass, and trees. Now it's a barren wasteland because of overgrazing and stripping. This activity is a sunk cost, but was also necessary to settle here (given the tech and understanding at the time), and I don't begrudge them doing what they needed to survive. Life was hard. But, we should be seriously trying to restore things to the way they were for thousands of years. Anyone who has tried to grow stuff out here understands the cycle. When trees are present, grasses and other plants fluorish underneath them. You can have a lightly forested field with grasses and other things, but when you cut the trees down it becomes a barren wasteland where even new trees can't grow because they can't get deep enough roots to survive the summer. It took nature thousands, millions of years to slowly spread the trees and grasses around because moving one tree closer to barren land takes almost a generation. Cutting them down devastates that overnight. It would benefit everyone in many ways to restore things to the way nature had them before we got here. Doing so would make a much more beautiful place for not only our children and granchildren, but us.
- sandworm101 3y agoDefinitely a good thing, but i cannot think of any other mammal that so enrages land owners. If you have beavers on your land, you are now on thier land. There just isnt any way to prepare a house, road, field or any other area the beavers want to inundated. You jut have to give up and biuld elsewhere.
- worldsayshi 3y agoI wonder if there are under appreciated economical uses of wetlands. They are so unpopular with land owners but so important for the ecology.
- stinos 3y agoDepending on location there's enough underappreciated indirect economical benefits to them ('ecosystem services' is the term used these dayss). For example a city I live nearby is largely protected from flooding because it's main river is, close to city's borders, embedded in a big wetland serving as a buffer, as it has been since the river started to exist. Last severe rainfall (which was close to an anomaly) it became like 80% full. The costs of the thing not being there would be several orders of magnitude larger than what one can make in a lifetime using it as farmland for instance, yet there are people thinking that way.
- EdwardDiego 3y agoThey're also a great reservoir of giardia. Apparently known as "beaver fever" in the US.
- Terr_ 3y ago> There just isnt any way to prepare a house, road, field or any other area the beavers want to inundated. Huh? Are you talking about the legal quirks of some particular place? Because there are plenty of practical measures. For example: Trapping the beavers, for relocation or some other fate); protecting trees with fencing or a sand/paint mix they dislike; putting in some cage-protected piping that limits the water-level in their dam; and various techniques to prevent beavers from blocking culverts and drains. Interestingly, beaver dam-building instincts are affected by the sound of rushing water (rather than a detailed understanding of flows and pressure) which means there's some acoustic engineering that can be done to prevent them from perceiving dam-opportunities.