How beavers help fight wildfires
What might beavers have to do with wildfire mitigation? Quite a lot, as it turns out. I talked about it with Dr. Emily Fairfax, an environmental scientist at California State University-Channel Islands who studies (among other things) how beaver dams impact the landscape around them. Here’s part of our conversation, edited for brevity. Tell me, what do beavers have to do with wildfires? Beavers are ecosystem engineers that can rapidly transform simple streams in thriving wetland ecosystems. In doing so, they also massively increase the surface water storage and soil water storage of landscapes. During wet periods, the earth around beaver ponds fills up with water like a great big sponge.