I’m sure you’re aware, in the 50 years with no wolves in Yellowstone, beavers were introduced nine times, every single time failed to establish a population. All either died or left.
In less than two years after establishing the first Wolfpack, beavers came back by themselves. When a overpopulated elk herd can stand on a stream and eat every single willow and Birch shoot, there’s nothing for the beavers to eat. When they have to avoid predation, the beavers get a chance.
Just think about that. The very outside ring of the web of life. Not a soul on earth caught on to that dynamic but in a retrospective point of view.
Our favorite thing to do is obviously going to be our demise. We love messing with things we don’t understand.
We are rather poor at seeing what we’re looking at.
It make me wonder if and how can the beaver help in already arid regions...Or if there was, once upon a time, other ecological keystones. Thank you for your, as usueal, amazing post.
“So the drying of our continents could mean more extreme hydrological events - with less small, regular rain coming from the small water cycle, and more big rains coming from the ocean.”
This is already in observed dynamic. The incidence of localized, ridiculously extreme weather events has risen twentyfold and just the past 50 years. The first year I came back to the Midwest, I experienced the 12 inch ran in 6 1/2 hours. By chance not a month afterwards I stumbled onto a map that showed these with the cone method. The bottom of the cone on the map was the area affected and the top was the amount of precipitation received. I wish I would’ve bookmarked it or if I did it’s on a different phone. Exponentially increased localized weather events could easily be our downfall. We have six months of food on hand at any given time paired with a yearly annual production of “food“ since the vast majority of it is based on toxic from input to product commodities, corn, soy, wheat….
If there is a food work on the cascade effect will be unimaginable, unknowable and unsurvivable.
I’m sure you’re aware, in the 50 years with no wolves in Yellowstone, beavers were introduced nine times, every single time failed to establish a population. All either died or left.
In less than two years after establishing the first Wolfpack, beavers came back by themselves. When a overpopulated elk herd can stand on a stream and eat every single willow and Birch shoot, there’s nothing for the beavers to eat. When they have to avoid predation, the beavers get a chance.
Just think about that. The very outside ring of the web of life. Not a soul on earth caught on to that dynamic but in a retrospective point of view.
Our favorite thing to do is obviously going to be our demise. We love messing with things we don’t understand.
We are rather poor at seeing what we’re looking at.
In my dreams, the Supreme Court read this issue and made a different decision in Sackett v. the Environmental Protection Agency. 💙
What a great piece!!!
It make me wonder if and how can the beaver help in already arid regions...Or if there was, once upon a time, other ecological keystones. Thank you for your, as usueal, amazing post.
“So the drying of our continents could mean more extreme hydrological events - with less small, regular rain coming from the small water cycle, and more big rains coming from the ocean.”
This is already in observed dynamic. The incidence of localized, ridiculously extreme weather events has risen twentyfold and just the past 50 years. The first year I came back to the Midwest, I experienced the 12 inch ran in 6 1/2 hours. By chance not a month afterwards I stumbled onto a map that showed these with the cone method. The bottom of the cone on the map was the area affected and the top was the amount of precipitation received. I wish I would’ve bookmarked it or if I did it’s on a different phone. Exponentially increased localized weather events could easily be our downfall. We have six months of food on hand at any given time paired with a yearly annual production of “food“ since the vast majority of it is based on toxic from input to product commodities, corn, soy, wheat….
If there is a food work on the cascade effect will be unimaginable, unknowable and unsurvivable.
Food war*