Beavers are ecosystem engineers, and one of our best natural climate solutions. The Beavers and Water Quality Bill would close beaver hunting and trapping in waterways on public lands that the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) classifies as ‘impaired.’ Beaver activities, including canal-digging, dam-building, and pond-filling can help slow water flow, restore impacted water tables and underground aquifers, create natural wetlands that filter toxins, expand riparian habitats for wildlife including sensitive bird species, and incorporate woody debris in streams for imperiled salmon. In other words, beavers improve water quality and restore habitat.
Worryingly, over 100,000 miles of Oregon’s waterways are in poor health — impaired by high temperatures, sedimentation or toxins, sometimes all three. DEQ is tasked with restoring these waterways, but doing so requires significant resources to design and implement plans to reduce the impairment. Fortunately, beavers can help, and they’re free!
Dear [ Elected official ],
As your constituent, I am writing to ask you to support HB 3932, the beaver and water quality bill. The bill proposes using beavers to address severe water quality issues in many Oregon waterways. Despite only surveying half of the state, the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has already deemed over 100,000 miles of Oregon’s waterways as “impaired.” The agency lacks the resources to address this widespread problem. Luckily, HB 3932 uses a free of cost nature-based solution to address our water quality issues.
A wealth of scientific literature shows beaver-created wetlands filter out pollution from our waters by slowing the flow, cooling stream temperature and letting pollutants settle. Beaver dam complexes are known to address four of the top factors contributing to impaired status of rivers and streams in Oregon: high temperature, dissolved oxygen, sedimentation and health of invertebrates. Beavers address these issues and they do it for free.
Our public lands and waterways should provide ecosystem services to all Oregonians, including clean drinking water. As a public lands user, I enjoy our public lands and waters recreationally and I also value them for the services they provide to us including clean air, clean water and other important ecosystem services. We need beavers to help recover our degraded public lands.
The data shows that we have very few beavers on public lands, and we need to retain the few beavers we have so they can do the work they naturally do. It is so rare that we have a natural and free solution to an entrenched environmental problem. Please support HB 3932!
