More Wolves, Beavers Could Help Western Lands
- Media Manager
- Aug 18, 2022
- 1 min read
Treehugger
Written By: Mary Jo DiLonardo
Published: August 19th, 2022
One of the areas hit hard by climate change is the American West. To help restore the faltering ecosystem, a team of researchers suggests rewilding the lands with wolves and beavers. They say adding the animals would help restore key ecological processes.
“We were very concerned about the converging crises in the American West, including extreme droughts and heatwaves, loss of biodiversity, massive wildfires, and water scarcity,” co-lead author Christopher Wolf, a postdoctoral scholar in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University, tells Treehugger.
“We felt these crises could be partially addressed through broad-scale rewilding of wolves and beaver, which can have many important co-benefits.”
Wolves and beavers have an important impact on the environment, the authors say, because they have far-reaching, rippling effects on their habitats.
In their paper, the team of 20 scientists suggests establishing a network of federal reserve areas. They propose an end to livestock grazing on some federal lands while restoring the gray wolf and North American beaver populations because the animals play such important roles.
“In the process of building dams, beavers have many important ecological effects such as improving water quality, enhancing riparian (river bank) habitat for plant and animal species and increasing carbon sequestration, which can help mitigate climate change,” Wolf explains.
“Likewise, gray wolves have many key ecological benefits. By controlling overabundant native ungulates (mammals with hooves), wolves support a variety of species, including aspen, which is a keystone species that in turn provides critical habitat for many plants and animals.”
