Restoring Forests with Furry Engineers
July 5, 2021
Joined a twitter thread yesterday after Journalist Lucy Sheriff brought up the topic of Beavers as landscape healing engineers, and included an amazing photo of Beaver hydrological architecture in a desert landscape.
She notes: “This is beaver land in Dixie Creek, Nevada in JULY”
Which was quickly followed by another from Joe Wheaton at Utah State, showing a site in Idaho, not just a desert, but burned over in a recent fire – except for the Beaver protected landscape.
All of which lead me to review my interview with Emily Fairfax, above. Dr Fairfax is now a professor at Cal State Channel Islands.
Her playful stop-motion video below is a quick illustration for how all this works. There’s obviously a trove of possibilities here, and perhaps the disastrous fire season we are now just beginning will awaken a sense that we need more than just human engineers on the job.
July 5, 2021 at 1:10 pm
Beavers are Furry Engineers and they restore the forests. Outstanding! Thank you 😊