Beavers Ease Droughts; A Blast from the Canadian Television Past

February 22, 2008

With their busy, dam-building ways, beavers seem to have a calling for work. If ever there was an example of a purpose driven life, it's the life of beavers. Now University of Alberta at Augustana researcher Glynnis Hood has determined that beavers help us, and entire ecosystems, by easing the effects of drought through their activities.

When beavers and their dams are around, the presence of open water in a region increases by up to 9 times. Thanks to beavers, even the most severe droughts may not desiccate landscapes and the creatures they support. In our infinite wisdom (not), we humans are infilling and draining wetlands to make way for urban and industrial expansion, removing beaver colonies in the process. We are therefore ensuring worse problems related to drought for us.

By leaving beavers be, the new research determined beavers recharge groundwater reserves, provide water for livestock and provide habitat and water resources used by amphibians and land animals.

Since the study was from Canada, I thought I'd share this classic moment from Canadian TV, which has long since been parodied.

And, because we're heading into the weekend, here's one of the parodies: