{"id":6891,"date":"2012-11-24T08:00:35","date_gmt":"2012-11-24T13:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=6891"},"modified":"2012-11-21T10:48:12","modified_gmt":"2012-11-21T15:48:12","slug":"got-drought-bring-in-the-beavers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2012\/11\/24\/got-drought-bring-in-the-beavers\/","title":{"rendered":"Got drought? Bring in the beavers."},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Beaver atop a dam. Photo: Marcin Klapczynski, CC some rights reserved<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

Beavers. Where to start?<\/p>\n

Yes, beavers are the animal that made Canada important thanks to the fur trade<\/a>.\u00a0The beaver remains a national symbol.<\/a><\/p>\n

The critter was hailed in a popular beer ad<\/a> \/nationalistic rant from 2000 as a \u00a0“truly proud and noble animal<\/a>”<\/p>\n

The word also become\u00a0problematic\u00a0slang<\/a>\u00a0– forcing a respected history magazine to change its name<\/a> so children could search for it on line without stumbling into awkward territory.<\/p>\n

Beavers are what many landowners and road crews<\/a> curse as they deal with felled trees and unwanted dams.<\/p>\n

With help from satellite imagery, researchers think they have identified the world’s\u00a0largest beaver dam<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0Wood Buffalo National Park, Alberta. (An estimated 2,800 feet long in 2010, it is assumed to be the work of several generations of beavers over the last 40 years.)<\/p>\n

Beavers are known for their ingenious, determined work ethic. They mate for life and are attentive parents<\/a>.\u00a0Watching them in the wild is a nice bonus for hikers and campers.<\/p>\n

Beavers<\/a> are all that and more. In fact, they are what ecologists call a keystone species.<\/a><\/p>\n

Hunted to extinction in Great Britain, this BBC article<\/a> describes how some beavers are being reestablished in Scotland.<\/p>\n

Now a December article in Canadian Geographic by Frances Backhouse,”Rethinking the Beaver<\/a>“, considers how beavers affect wetlands and watersheds with an eye on how that could be a plus in dealing with heightened risk of drought.<\/p>\n

The material presented isn’t especially new. But if cycles of drought and flood become more regular spectres it’s worth looking at ways to mitigate those impacts.<\/p>\n

Ironically, having done so much to prevent flooding in the\u00a0Netherlands\u00a0through human engineering, officials there are concerned<\/a> that a growing beaver population there could threaten their dykes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beavers. Where to start? Yes, beavers are the animal that made Canada important thanks to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[7096,880,4797,6922,7097,7099,5670,7098],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6891"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6891"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6897,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6891\/revisions\/6897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}