This was a fun headine to come across:

First it was the dodo – now scientists want to resurrect the giant bear and jumbo beaver

At Colossal Biosciences in the US, scientists are already well on their way to reviving the mammoth, Tasmanian tiger (thylacine) and the dodo – but they have other creatures in their sights too.

Prof Beth Shapiro, chief science officer at Colossal, said she had a “very long list” of extinct animals she would like to see brought back.

“I would like to work on all of them because I’d like to learn more about the biology of these animals,” she told The Telegraph. “Carnivores would be cool.

I don’t think you can resurrect species just because :”It would be cool”. Aren’t there some kinds of ethics for scientists?

The giant beaver, castoroides, was an enormous rodent which also lived in North America during the Pleistocene and became extinct about 10,000 years ago. Recovered skulls suggest it could swim underwater for large periods, and had six-inch teeth.

Although bringing back animals from extinction has echoes of Jurassic Park, the team at Colossal hopes the techniques they are pioneering could uncover lost genetic traits from the past and ensure that no species alive today need ever go permanently extinct.

Um, NO. You aren’t going to prevent extinctions by creating Franken-beaver. Trust me on this.

The team is now delving far deeper into the past, hunting for ancient DNA which could lead to the discovery of entirely new species never found in the fossil record.

In recent years, experts have found fragments of DNA that date back two million years in Greenland, and it is possible that samples could be preserved from even further back in time.

However, Prof Shapiro said she would draw the line at ancient hominids and human ancestors, such as Neanderthals.

I assume your team of scientist occasionally have good ideas, Because this is a VERY BAD ONE.

We can’t even figure how to coexist with the size of beaver we have now.

Now look what you’ve made them do. The Sacramento Bee HATES to write about beavers. Even when Pulitzer prize winner Tom Knutson did his jaw-dropping report on USDA they only wrote about beavers because he made them. Now they are forced to climb aboard.

Beaver restoration program brings furry species back to habitats, tribal land across California

California has strengthened a new Beaver Restoration Program which is dedicated to supporting the species and their habitats. With the passing of Assembly Bill 2196, the program has partnered with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The initiative works with California tribal nations, private landowners and non-government organizations on implementing coexistence and beaver-assisted restoration projects to the state’s wildlife habitats. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB2196 into law in September. The bill’s author, Assemblyman Damon Connolly, D-San Rafael, said the law will now codified the program’s efforts.

“Beavers are an instrumental keystone species to our ecosystems, and they play a vital role in maintaining the habitats around them for the benefit of other species,” said Connolly in a news release. “The initiative to restore beavers back into their original wildlife habitats is beneficial to species recovery, improving habitat complexity, and enhancing watershed restoration through dam complexes.”

Those very things that ruin our levies, We still get to kill them right?

Brock Dolman, the co-founder of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, has been working on beaver restoration since the late 2000s, he said. The Occidental Arts and Ecology Center has been at the forefront of the beaver restoration program, to center a co-existence mindset with the species

.Beavers have sometimes been seen as a nuisance or pest, Dolman said. In reality, beavers are beneficial to the environment. They help keep up maintenance to California rivers, wetlands and mountain meadows, and slow down water from spreading and sinking in with their dams and canals. As a result, their presence helps address issues with flooding and droughts. “What’s equally important is the recognition of the types of benefits that beavers (provide) and what beavers do in rivers and in wetlands, mountain meadows, salmon streams and urban riparian corridors,”

Dolman said. For example, a paper from the California State University, Channel Islands, found that beavers play a part in wildfire prevention. When analyzing five wildfires in the American West, those that had beaver dams burned three times less than those without. Collaboration with California tribal nations

Yes well we like that part. Can we order just the fire prevention beavers and not the flooding the levies one? Where do we sign up for that.

Around 10 years ago, Tule River tribal leaders began their initiative to bring beavers back. These efforts became a reality this year. In June, a family of seven beavers were reintroduced to Tule River tribal lands in the southern Sierra Nevada.

“I’m very happy to see (the beavers) come home and it’s going to be wonderful to watch them do their thing,” said Kenneth McDarment, a member of the Tule River Tribe, in a news release. “People will be educated even more by seeing the work that they do and the benefits they bring to the environment. My hope is to have the beaver throughout the reservation and all the watershed that we have.”’

Which reminds me. It’s been more than a year since the first reintroduction to Maidu land. Don’t you think California deserves and update on how they’re doing?  Did they survive? Were kits born? How many dams did they make?

Inquiring minds want to know.

I literally love the look of this AND the soundtrack because once upon a time a long time ago when I was first filming our beavers scrambling to save their lives by putting them on the then-2 year old youtube I set them to the Mills Brothers.

Ah. Memories.

Everette Haire of the Beaver Management Forum posted it yesterday along with the statement:

Another nice report about beavers and fire, this one from Wyoming.

As wildfires get more intense, researchers say beavers have a role to play in confronting the crisis

Black coffee and a croissant was Emily Fairfax’s order. She’s an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota’s Geography, Environment and Society department, and a leading scholar on the relationship between beaver-dammed riverscapes and wildfire.

The team piled into a rental SUV and headed southwest toward the Colorado border. In 2020, the Mullen Fire burned nearly 180,000 acres on both sides of the state line.

“Within this fire scar, there are about a thousand satellite-visible beaver ponds that provided fire refugia during the fire,” she explained.

Fire refugia are parts of wildfires that burn at low intensity or don’t burn at all, and are where animals and plants are much more likely to survive.

Fairfax and her colleagues argue that beavers “can be part of a comprehensive fire-mitigation strategy while offering additional benefits to biological communities, including humans, even when fire is not an active threat.”

“Beaver conservation, beaver coexistence strategies, and beaver-based restoration should be strongly considered for inclusion when planning fire risk-mitigation strategies, and when developing or updating watershed and land management plans,” the paper concludes.