How beavers could help save the western US from a dry future

Michel Roggo/Naturepl.com

By Macgregor Campbell

GOLD wasn’t what drew the first European settlers out West. The California gold rush was preceded by the California fur rush: having exhausted what nature could supply in Europe and in the eastern American colonies, trappers set out in search of new riches. The thick, lush coat of the North American beaver was particularly prized. It was traded for every commodity under the sun, shipped around the world and used to make clothes and hats.

How fortunes change. The fur rush drove the North American beaver, Castor canadensis, to near-extinction. Then, after a remarkable comeback last century, the once-prized rodent became a pest. Now, some say it could be on the cusp of a fresh rebranding: not as a prize or a pest, but as a prodigy.

Known as nature’s engineers, beavers seem to magic water out of nowhere. Crucially, their dams also help to store that water. At a time when California faces endless water shortages and long-standing drought, could beavers be part of a more natural solution?

Once hunted to near-extinction, the North American beaver is making a comeback

George Konig/Keystone Features/Getty

Like much of northern California, the area around Sugar Creek, just off state route 3, was once dredged for gold. Streams were forced into channels and wetlands drained. As a consequence, metres-high mounds of bare river rock now bake in the sun. But tucked away in the midst of all this rubble, a curious scene unfolds.

Shrubs swallow the rocks, bulrushes stand in a wide expanse of clear, still water, and cottonwood trees tower over the landscape. In the speckled shadows, yellow butterflies dip ...