> But beavers can only thrive if landowners allow them to.
My environment was improved to an unliveable asphalt/gravel sprawl from edge of city with woods with frog and birdsong...
Environmentalism is in direct conflict with densely packing "stuff" onto land whether that's people or industry. If you want to preserve nature embrace the "concrete jungle" and the density it brings.
Look at historical small towns vs modern build outs of the same population. Despite building maybe four stories high at most 50k people in some New England or Midwest mill town fit on a tiny fraction of the developed area of the same modern population simply because environmentalists weren't around to mandate engineered drainage ditches and green spaces and setbacks and fire lanes a drunk could back a lowboy into and all the other stuff
It is entirely possible that our current way of living, including the idea of “private land” as it exists today, may not be conducive to our long-term survival.
The forces of nature care not for our political and philosophical debates.
They should of done a better job purchasing land.
Tons of vacant land owners would be happy to allow beavers and everything else if not for the fact that it destroys any prospect of doing anything on the land.
My parents have 100+ acres of bush in central Alberta. When they bought the property it was logged out and mostly in a bad abused state and mostly dry. Over a few years, beavers moved in and transformed a formerly semi-marshy spot into a full pond. And then another. And another.
Eventually though, without a lot of predators around (there's some skittish bears, coyotes, that's it) they begin to overpopulate. And any efforts to keep the water level at a certain point starts to get tricky. In order to keep access to some parts of the property my dad ended up having to put in some sneaky culverts with various tricks to stop them from plugging them. (I forget, but he eventually figured out a beaverproof trick).
Even then, every few years the need to "remove" some of the beavers, because they just get to be too many, they run out of poplars near their lodge and start to cause more problems for downstream and upstream neighbours.
They've done amazing things for the property. But when my parents pass it's going to be hard to maintain this property with the beavers actively trying to transform it constantly.
1. https://www.science.org/content/article/beaver-dams-without-...
Lost cost, high reward. Not sexy enough to get the attention it deserves.
This really made laugh for some reason, just imagining a beaver typing away at HN specifically.
Later on, the government brought him some beavers from elsewhere, and they flourished.