Though it’s fairly uncommon, some #beaver dams are incredibly tall! This dam measures 11-12ft from dam crest to stream bottom. Are the beavers that built this dam also huge? Nope! Well, no huger than normal. Just very clever with floating & pushing logs around while building.

I have not!

Super excited to share that my PhD student Keitreice Kirksey and I were featured in Episode 2: Fire of the new PBS docuseries Dynamic Planet! Check it out to learn more about beavers and wildfire, our segment starts at 28:30: www.pbs.org/video/fire-q...

Beavers once again acting as ecosystem engineers for wildfire risk, mitigating burn severity in the most intense Colorado megafires. From @emilyfairfax.bsky.socialtwitter.com/EmilyFairfax...

Hmm definitely could be! Hard to say for sure without more details about the landscape setting. But there used to be tons of beavers all over the place and they certainly made a lot of spongy meadows that function like carbon sinks in the western US.

Are you in the Midwest? Want to learn about beaver wetlands as climate resilient natural infrastructure? 🔥🌱🦫 Come to the PPRSUM conference in Stillwater, MN Feb 25-28! I’m the opening speaker & running a post-conference beaver workshop at SAFL! prrsum.umn.edu/symposium/um...

Beavers were up in the Arctic before! Definitely 10k and 8k years ago, and likely more recently than that. They didn’t cause runaway catastrophic warming then, so I’m not overly worried about them doing so now. People, on the other hand….

Beavs can definitely help With flood mitigation. There have been some really cool studies out of Canada and the UK showing that when you have a bunch of beavers in the watershed their dams can reduce the intensity of flood waves significantly, and that most dams won’t even wash out!

This is fantastic - using machine learning to find beavers. @emilyfairfax.bsky.socialapple.news/AmuxyTwXwTZy...

Spying on Beavers From Space Could Help Save California

A group of scientists taught an algorithm to spot beaver ponds in satellite imagery, which has the potential to help drought-ridden areas like California bounce back.

I am not sure what the details are actually - the press release was the first I heard that justification for trapping that family of beavers. I know there is a site in CA with some endangered bird that lives by beavers where the land over routinely lethally manages the beavs. Maybe it’s that place?