Bring Back Beavers To Keep California Wet

[Still Waters]

On California's central coast, a region that usually receives drenching rainfall or fog for most of the year, some forests are now as arid as a desert. Streams that once ran at least at a trickle through summer have vanished in the ongoing drought, and environmentalists and fishermen fear that local salmon will disappear if climate conditions don't improve. The landscape desperately needs rain.

It could also use beavers, according to ecologists who say the near eradication of Castor canadensis from parts of the West in the 19th century has magnified the effects of California's worst dry spell in history.

http://www.waterdeep...s-water-future/

[Ashotep]

If its not raining how is a beaver going to help anything. They need water to live in and build damns.

Another case of not appreciating what you have until its gone.

[Sundew]

If its not raining how is a beaver going to help anything. They need water to live in and build damns.

Another case of not appreciating what you have until its gone.

Not all water locally comes from rain, especially in mountainous areas. At least some of California's water is from snow melt in the mountains which travels hundreds of miles to the ocean, and beaver dams could catch and hold some of it and release it more slowly over the course of a year. You could also introduce beavers to areas where there is water, then let them gradually move into dryer habitats at rainfall permits. Trouble is, they can also turn someone's nice dry pasture or orchard into a pond, so consideration has to be given to what their dams will do to landowners as well.