BELIEVE IN THE BEAVERS
Beavers and their dams can either be a curse or a blessing, depending on whom you ask.
For those who gathered at the Santa Barbara Permaculture Network’s event Friday night at Bici Centro, the bucktooth dam engineers are a blessing.
Santa Barbara Permaculture Network co-founder Margie Bushman, for example, told the News-Press that the dams “slow the water, sink [the water] into place and rehydrate the land.” In addition, she added, the dams play a role in filtering out the toxins from the water before it reaches rivers and oceans.
All these effects are beneficial to the environment for Ms. Bushman. A study on beavers, which UK-based scientific journal Nature published two months ago, seems to agree with her.
The study’s researchers, Rebekah Levine and Grant A. Meyer, found that beaver dams, even after beavers leave, promote river banks’ habitat diversity. Dr. Levine, of the University of Montana Western, and Dr. Meyer, of the University of New Mexico,, wrote, “The full cycle of beaver activity — including dam building, breaching and herbivory — enhances fluvial and floodplain dynamics, and promotes the reproduction and regeneration of riparian plants, not only at active dam sites, but throughout intervening stream reaches as well.”
Though the study was conducted at creeks in Montana, the findings would have generated cheers at Friday’s event.
Ms. Bushman and her nonprofit held the gathering for those who want to see more beavers in Santa Barbara County. As part of its program series Civics 101 for Climate Change, the organization aimed to educate attendees about beavers’ environmental benefits.
“We’re interested in the beaver because we’re looking for solutions to restore the ecosystem,” said Ms. Bushman.
She added that beavers in “large numbers” were wading and waddling around Santa Barbara County before heavy trapping began in the 1800s with the arrival of Europeans.
To learn about how to bring beavers back to the region, more than 50 individuals showed up for Friday’s event, which began with a puppet show.
The, took place in a stage built to look like a dam. The stars of the show included a wise owl, a wolf, a bear, a bat and, of course, beavers. The animals chatted among themselves and to the audience about how beavers’ presence and lack would affect them.
Friday evening also included a documentary about beavers. The film, “The Beaver Believers,” follows a group of individuals whose goal was to restore the North American beaver to the watersheds of the American West.
According to Ms. Bushman’s network, the documentary encourages a new model for managing the Western lands, “one that seems to partner with the natural world rather than overpower it.” The film was shot in Mexico, Canada and eight U.S. states.
Those who wanted to show extra beaver spirit Friday got beavers hand-painted onto their faces and arms.