{"id":1687,"date":"2020-12-11T08:00:18","date_gmt":"2020-12-11T08:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thepoetryofscience.peachpuff-wolverine-566518.hostingersite.com\/?p=1687"},"modified":"2020-12-11T08:00:18","modified_gmt":"2020-12-11T08:00:18","slug":"damming-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/thepoetryofscience\/1687\/damming-loss\/","title":{"rendered":"Damming Loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

Returning to forsaken lands
\nyou cautiously rebuild
\nyour island homes;
\nevery log, branch,
\nand mud pile
\npressed on with the
\nprecise hesitancy
\nof re-colonised dreams.<\/p>\n

Across pond, marsh,
\nand wet meadow you
\nerect your recently-living
\nedifices –
\ndamp monuments
\nthat cling desperately
\nto the receding waters.<\/p>\n

Deep pools form between
\nthe creases of
\nyour artificial contours,
\nlubricating the vice
\nthat seeks to choke
\nthe grateful occupants
\nof these forest oases.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
A beaver dam in the Cascade Range (Image Credit: Gerhard Huber).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This poem is inspired by recent research<\/a>, which has found that beavers may help amphibians threatened by climate change.<\/p>\n

Beavers were once abundant in the Pacific Northwest but were hunted nearly to extinction during the nineteenth century. Recently however, some land managers have begun to relocate beavers into places that they occupied in the past. This has resulted in the beavers’ numbers slowly recovering and is also having a positive influence on the diversity of certain amphibian species in these regions. By expanding existing ponds and increasing the time that they exist before drying up, beaver dams are allowing these species more time to reproduce and develop.<\/p>\n

In this new study, researchers identified 49 sites within the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, located in the southern Washington Cascade Range of the northwest United States. By looking at study sites that did and did not contain beaver dams, the researchers found that sites with beaver dams contained almost three times more variety of species than the undammed sites. They also found that certain types of amphibians, particularly those that develop more slowly, such as red-legged frogs and northwestern salamanders, were found almost exclusively in the dammed sites. The results of this study indicate that beavers could play a pivotal role in ecosystem restoration, management, and climate adaption, especially in those regions that are expected to undergo significant drying episodes brought about by climate change.<\/p>\n