Beaver Library

A new study concludes that, by building dams, forming ponds, and digging canals, beavers irrigate vast stream corridors and create fireproof refuges in which plants and animals can shelter. In some cases, the rodents’ engineering can even stop fire in its tracks.

An Introduction to the Role of Beavers in a Warming World. Dr. Emily Fairfax’s ASWM presentation on the ability of beavers to combat climate change, such as reducing wildfire damage.

The final webinar in the ASWM-BLM Beaver Restoration Webinar Series showcases research which indicates that beavers are able to create and maintain wetlands resistant to both seasonal and multiyear droughts and that this landscape wetting and drought buffering goes on to reduce or prevent burning in wildfire. Perhaps instead of relying solely on human engineering and management to create and maintain fire?resistant landscape patches, we could benefit from beaver’s ecosystem engineering to achieve the same goals at a lower cost.

This guidebook provides a practical synthesis of the best available science for using beaver to improve ecosystem functions. The overall goal is to provide an accessible, useful resource for those involved in using beaver to restore streams, floodplains, wetlands, and riparian ecosystems.

A 44 minute Baltimore Sun podcast by Dan Rodricks on beavers and their impact. He interviews beaver experts Frances Backhouse, Mike Callahan, and Scott McGill on the history, present management and future of beavers in North America. Recorded in Feb. 2, 2018

Opinion piece explaining why President Biden should create an Ecosystem Restoration Corps in 2021 to create jobs and improve this country’s environment.

The Utah Beaver Restoration Assessment Tool (BRAT) serves as a decision support and planning tool intended to help resource managers, restoration practitioners, wildlife biologists and researchers assess the potential for beaver as a stream conservation and restoration agent over large regions.

This study proposes that live vegetation and beaver dams or beaver dam analogues can substantially accelerate the recovery of incised streams and can help create and maintain complex fluvial ecosystems.

Tested how assisting beaver to create stable colonies and aggrade incised reaches of Bridge Creek could create measurable improvements in riparian and stream habitat conditions and abundance of native steelhead.

This study found that prescribed fires negatively affected beaver lodge occupancy, an effect compounded with frequent burns. Though prescribed fire is considered an important landscape restoration process, the frequency of prescribed burning should be mitigated to ensure that flooding by beavers can continue as a key process that maintains wetlands on the landscape.

This publication, guided by the inseparable nature of streams and riparian ecosystems, emphasizes the interrelationships and continuity of riparian areas along with dependent wildlife and human services.

The potential role of beavers in mitigating wildfire impacts on stream ecosystems

Impact of beavers regarding drought and wildfire in the Methow River Watershed

Study of how beaver ponds make nearby vegetation more resilient towards wildfires