Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Marsha for Radio I, and today I
Speaker 1: will be reading National Geographic magazine dated June twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: which is donated by the publisher. As a reminder. RADIOI
Speaker 1: is a reading service intended for people who are blind
Speaker 1: or have other disabilities that make it difficult to read
Speaker 1: printed material. Please join me now for the continuation of
Speaker 1: the article I began last time, entitled Owases on the
Speaker 1: Brink by Tristan mc connell near Mahmad. The palms survive
Speaker 1: largely because farmers use ground water extracted with individual solar
Speaker 1: pumps to irrigate their plots. They are cheap to run
Speaker 1: and make extracting water easy, but they are a short
Speaker 1: term fix. The brackish ground water increases the salinity of
Speaker 1: the soil, making growing crops even more difficult, and pulling
Speaker 1: straight from the aquifer can put it out of reach
Speaker 1: of even the deepest palm tree roots. As long as
Speaker 1: people keep pumping ground water with solar they think there's
Speaker 1: no problem, says spy. But when you see solar you
Speaker 1: can very quickly kill the oasis. Abdul Kharim Banucci, a
Speaker 1: forty eight year old with a thick mustache, and dressed
Speaker 1: in a white tunic and turban. Has farmed in Mahmid
Speaker 1: all his life. When he was growing up, there were
Speaker 1: periods of drought that would decimate crops, he says, but
Speaker 1: the palms stayed strong. Now even they whither and date
Speaker 1: yields are falling. The palm cover on his acre plot
Speaker 1: is scant, and the fruit trees are gone. Unable to
Speaker 1: rely on the river or rain for irrigation, uses ground
Speaker 1: water pumped from his own well at the far end
Speaker 1: of his land, and every three years he must dig
Speaker 1: it deeper. In nineteen ninety six, a twenty three foot
Speaker 1: well was enough. Now it reaches to fifty two feet.
Speaker 1: It is in God's hands, BENAUI says, But as I
Speaker 1: see it, there is no future for farming here because
Speaker 1: of the water. In agriculture you always lose. He expects
Speaker 1: that eventually his three young sons, all of whom are
Speaker 1: under ten, will abandon farmining, abandoned farming and the oasis
Speaker 1: in a destructive feedback loop, migration pastins the oases surrender
Speaker 1: to the desert. The local population has fallen by a
Speaker 1: fifth in the past twenty years, and as mostly young
Speaker 1: people leave, it's harder for the aging population that remains
Speaker 1: to maintain the palm trees and irrigation channels. There's nothing
Speaker 1: to do here because there's no rain, so people emigrate,
Speaker 1: says sixty one year old farmer ab De Lai Lachbo,
Speaker 1: whose three sons have left. There is nobody around, just
Speaker 1: us old people. In his long white jalava and purple scarf,
Speaker 1: Laboch takes meat to the sand filled irrigation channels and
Speaker 1: sand covered fields nearby. There's nobody here to help us work,
Speaker 1: he says, shrugging. Neglected and abandoned plots. Let the desert in,
Speaker 1: and a few days of strong wind is all it
Speaker 1: takes to coat the earth with sand, starting the process
Speaker 1: of soiled degradation. As we walk around to Banao, one
Speaker 1: of Mohammad's satellite villages, Sabah tells me that of the
Speaker 1: two hundred families that used to live here, only five remain.
Speaker 1: The rest, he says, have seen their homes taken by
Speaker 1: the desert. They are no longer enough residence to clear
Speaker 1: the sand clogged alleys and passages, nor to maintain and
Speaker 1: repair the rammed earth walls of the Kassar, which are
Speaker 1: crumbling and collapsing like a sand castle in a rising tide.
Speaker 1: One of the few still living here is sixty eight
Speaker 1: year old the Ala'id Ilaghnoi, a thick set farmer who
Speaker 1: once who long ago seated the ground floor of his
Speaker 1: mud walled house to the desert. From his perch up stairs,
Speaker 1: he used the flashlight on his phone to peer at
Speaker 1: the sand filled hall below. If there is any chance
Speaker 1: of rescuing Mohammed and charting a path towards saving other
Speaker 1: oases across the world, it might come from a small
Speaker 1: two acre plot on the edge of town, where Sabai
Speaker 1: has constructed a laboratory of pilot projects aimed at holding
Speaker 1: back the desert and holding on to water. Acacia and
Speaker 1: tamarisk trees sprout from shallow, circular planters called water boxes
Speaker 1: that were designed by a Dutch horticulturist named Peter Hoff.
Speaker 1: These planters reduce the amount of water young saplings need
Speaker 1: and act as a barrier against the desert. For years,
Speaker 1: Spy has worked with a Dutch foundation called Sahara Roots,
Speaker 1: planting hundreds of trees around Mahid to strengthen what he
Speaker 1: calls the natural system. To stop the sand. He has
Speaker 1: also introduced pipes for drip fed irrigation, which snake across
Speaker 1: vegetable beds and use far less water than the traditional
Speaker 1: method of flood irrigation that ceased to make sense when
Speaker 1: the river stopped flowing. These solutions, though modest in scope,
Speaker 1: are all aimed at restoring and recalibrating the balance between
Speaker 1: the people of the oasis and the changing landscape in
Speaker 1: which they live. Take the solar pumps. Climate change has
Speaker 1: made them necessary, but when their private lyad owned, as
Speaker 1: most currently are, people take what they want regardless of
Speaker 1: the needs of others. Spy has been pushing local farmers
Speaker 1: and government agencies to reconsider how the pumps are used
Speaker 1: in nomadic culture. He says, you need to share everything.
Speaker 1: Thanks in part to Spy's lobbying, Morocco's National Agency for
Speaker 1: the Development of Oasis Zones and Argonne Trees is working
Speaker 1: to install communities solar pumps and wells to replace private
Speaker 1: ones in Mahmied and elsewhere, so that water can once
Speaker 1: again be managed communally and shared equitably. Of course, none
Speaker 1: of that will matter if the entire population of Mahmed
Speaker 1: leaves for better opportunities elsewhere, So in twenty sixteen, Spy
Speaker 1: co founded the Judour Sahira Music School with Thomas Duncan
Speaker 1: of the Playing for Change Foundation, a California nonprofit that
Speaker 1: uses music to bring communities together. We asked, what can
Speaker 1: you offer young people to make them stay so duncan.
Speaker 1: Their answer is to celebrate, share and preserve knowledge of
Speaker 1: the cultural traditions of the desert and the oasis. Children
Speaker 1: attend weekly music classes in the traditional Ahidos, Guana, rockba Akalal,
Speaker 1: and Chamra styles. The school has since given rise to
Speaker 1: the Zaman Festival, which features hundreds of musical artists from
Speaker 1: across the Sahara and attracts thousands of visitors. The school's
Speaker 1: new home, the Jodur Sahira Cultural Center, was completed last
Speaker 1: year and consists of two modern rammed earth buildings designed
Speaker 1: by Baraccan architect A Ziza Chahuni. One is a sunken
Speaker 1: amphitheater for musical performances, the other a classroom with a
Speaker 1: subterranean cistern. The two structures are connected by underground water pipes.
Speaker 1: Rainwater is collected and stored in the reservoir. Real resilience
Speaker 1: is saving every drop of rainwater, says by. A riad
Speaker 1: style building for visiting musicians is under construction near by.
Speaker 1: The idea was to revive traditional materials that completely make
Speaker 1: sense in the area, says Chooni, to build pride in
Speaker 1: traditional architecture, not to just copy the past, but be innovative.
Speaker 1: Sabai often talks about the importance of nomadic culture, the
Speaker 1: need to live within the constraints of nature and the
Speaker 1: desert's tough environment, to share resources as a community, to
Speaker 1: not waste anything. He says these old ways are key
Speaker 1: to the restoration and survival of the oasis in the
Speaker 1: face of climate change. Saba started as a tour operator
Speaker 1: before expanding into environmental and cultural activism. He still believes
Speaker 1: in the value of tourism to the oasis economy, but
Speaker 1: he wonders what kind of tourism the kind that builds
Speaker 1: with concrete, fills swimming pools with precious water, and tears
Speaker 1: up the dunes for gasoline fueled kicks, or something slower
Speaker 1: and simpler that treads more lightly on the land, exists
Speaker 1: in harmony with the landscape and draws on the rich
Speaker 1: culture and history of the oasis. One cold clear evening,
Speaker 1: he reclines against a thick poof on a hand woven
Speaker 1: carpet laid out by a fire. One of his guests
Speaker 1: is a taureg desert blues guitarists visiting the music school
Speaker 1: from Mauritania, who carefully serves tea poured from a small
Speaker 1: painted teapot. Teapot heated in the fire's embers. A waxing
Speaker 1: moon shines bright above, and a thick stand of date
Speaker 1: palms is silhouetted against the indigo sky. We have the stars,
Speaker 1: and a fire's spy says we are the luckiest people
Speaker 1: on earth. The oasis is fragile, it's future uncertain, but
Speaker 1: it is where Saby comes from and where he belongs,
Speaker 1: and he is determined to save it, the extraordinary oasis.
Speaker 1: For centuries, oases have been important cultural and ecological landmarks
Speaker 1: in Morocco, despite the fact that they receive fewer than
Speaker 1: ten inches of rain each year. They've persisted thanks to
Speaker 1: clever human engineering that takes advantage of a delicate ecological balance,
Speaker 1: opportune geography in the rain shadow of the Atlas Mountains,
Speaker 1: water flows in intermittent streams and collects, and low lying aquifers,
Speaker 1: protective palms, date palm trees, a keystone species, are planted
Speaker 1: to provide fruit and protect smaller plants from harsh sun,
Speaker 1: winds and sands. A fragile equilibrium under threat. Rising temperatures
Speaker 1: and changing rain patters due to climate change have exacerbated
Speaker 1: existing threats, which can have a ripple effect across the
Speaker 1: delicate oasis ecosystems. Drought less rainfall and increase drilling, lower
Speaker 1: water tables and rays, fire risks. Bayoude disease of fungal
Speaker 1: pathogen has killed significant portions of critical palm groves. Soil
Speaker 1: salinity salt from pumped ground water accumulates in the soil.
Speaker 1: Migration ecological stress causes community caretakers to flee desertification. Vacated
Speaker 1: land returns to desert, sand pollutes water fields and towns. Next,
Speaker 1: are we sure Pluto isn't a planet? Nearly twenty years
Speaker 1: since it was downgraded to a dwarf planet, Pluto's bona
Speaker 1: fides still spark debate by Eric Ault. After its discovery
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty, Pluto was declared the ninth planet in
Speaker 1: our Solar system and quickly garnered attention not typically afforded
Speaker 1: to its galactic peers. This was thanks in part to
Speaker 1: the power of celebrity. The small, multi colored icy rock
Speaker 1: has long been associated with Bickey Mouse's pet dog, which
Speaker 1: which originally named Rover but most likely renamed after the
Speaker 1: planet in nineteen thirty one. Then in two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: Mike Brown, a professor of astronomy at Caltech, crashed the
Speaker 1: party upon discovering Eiras similar in size to Pluto and
Speaker 1: also in the Queper Belt, calling into question Pluto's classification.
Speaker 1: As a result, in two thousand and six, the International
Speaker 1: Astronomical Union AU voted to adopt new requirements for planetary status,
Speaker 1: kicking Pluto out of the club and into the newly
Speaker 1: defined category of dwarf planet. Brown expanded on his reasoning
Speaker 1: in his aptly titled memoir How I Killed Pluto and
Speaker 1: Why It Had It coming. In the years since, the
Speaker 1: worlds of science and pop culture have hotly debated Pluto's fate.
Speaker 1: Among Brown's good natured adversaries is Philip Metzger, a retired
Speaker 1: planetary physicist at Nassaus Kennedy Space Center, current associate scientist
Speaker 1: at the University of Central Florida, and avowed Pluto is
Speaker 1: a planet believer. To celebrate the ninety fifth anniversary of
Speaker 1: Pluto's discovery, we sat down with Brown and Metzger to
Speaker 1: get some clarity. Are Brown and his cohorts correct in
Speaker 1: reducing Pluto's significance and instead focusing on new discoveries like
Speaker 1: the still unconfirmed planet nine or dou Metzger and others
Speaker 1: have a solid argument for the triumphant return of everyone's
Speaker 1: favorite little planet. Mike, how did you arrive at your
Speaker 1: conclusion that Pluto isn't a planet? And Philip, how did
Speaker 1: you wind up on the other side of the fence?
Speaker 1: Mike Brown? Since I've been at Caltech, one of my
Speaker 1: main areas of interest has been the objects in the
Speaker 1: outer part of the Solar System and queeper belt, objects
Speaker 1: like Pluto. And one of the largest projects that I
Speaker 1: did back in the early two thousands was the first
Speaker 1: really wide scale search for other objects as large as Pluto,
Speaker 1: other dwarf planets before we called them dwarf planets, which
Speaker 1: by the way, is a stupid term. How so mb
Speaker 1: because it's unnecessarily confusing. Before the IAU made up that term,
Speaker 1: we use the word planetoid to describe these things that
Speaker 1: are small but round, and it's a much better word
Speaker 1: because it's not as confusing. The only reason that Pluto
Speaker 1: was called a dwarf planet after its planet status was
Speaker 1: revoked is because that was snuck in there by the
Speaker 1: pro Pluto people in hopes they could get then get
Speaker 1: a vote that dwarf planets are planets. The vote was
Speaker 1: then overwhelmingly rejected, but we are left with that stupid phrase.
Speaker 1: I blame the Pluto people for that, Philip Metzger. We
Speaker 1: would say that there are a lot of dwarf planets
Speaker 1: and that these dwarf planets are actually planets in the
Speaker 1: Queper Belt. But the thing is, we're not really arguing
Speaker 1: for Pluto to be reinstated because we think that the
Speaker 1: vote to downgrade it was irrelevant. The IAU didn't have
Speaker 1: a right to do that vote. They violated their own
Speaker 1: by laws when they did it. Our claim is that
Speaker 1: it never stopped being a planet because taxonomy is part
Speaker 1: of science, and the taxonomy that matters is the one
Speaker 1: that the scientists are using and finding useful, whereas the
Speaker 1: public's astrological based taxonomy is not useful for science. It
Speaker 1: doesn't align with any theories, and that's unfortunately the one
Speaker 1: that the i a U adopted well, let's start there.
Speaker 1: What other criteria for planet status p M. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and six, the IAU decided number one that a
Speaker 1: planet must orbit a star. Directly based on that, the
Speaker 1: Moon would not be a planet. It's what we call
Speaker 1: a secondary planet, whereas the Earth is a primary planet.
Speaker 1: The second thing they said is that a planet has
Speaker 1: to be large enough to pull itself into a round
Speaker 1: shape by its own gravity, what we call gravitational rounding.
Speaker 1: And then the third condition was, and this is the
Speaker 1: one designed to eliminate bodies like Pluto, it has to
Speaker 1: gravitationally dominate its orbit in order to clear the neighborhood
Speaker 1: of its own orbit from other bodies. They didn't define
Speaker 1: what that they meant by that, they disfigured people would
Speaker 1: make it more concrete. Later. You can argue that Earth
Speaker 1: is not a planet because the Earth doesn't clear out
Speaker 1: its own neighborhood. What they really meant was a planet
Speaker 1: has to be gravitationally dominant, according to some unknown metric
Speaker 1: that they hadn't created yet. Mike Brown. In nearly two thousands,
Speaker 1: digital cameras started to get much much better, and we
Speaker 1: could finally take pictures of the whole sky at once.
Speaker 1: We used that to discover these biggest, brightest dwarfest planets
Speaker 1: that are out there, including the one that really forced
Speaker 1: a discussion about Pluto. We discovered Eris, which is more
Speaker 1: massive than Pluto. And so suddenly something was going to
Speaker 1: have to give. You were either going to have to
Speaker 1: add new planets or subtract things that are no longer planets.
Speaker 1: If Pluto were discovered to day, nobody would say it
Speaker 1: was a planet. Are we too hung up on the
Speaker 1: number nine? Have we just all grown up with nine
Speaker 1: planets and the thought of either eight or infinite numbers
Speaker 1: of planets makes us uneasy? Mike Brown, No, there's no
Speaker 1: magic number. It's not that Pluto had to be subtracted.
Speaker 1: It's that astronomers were forced to acknowledge the reality that
Speaker 1: it didn't fit with what we know about planets now.
Speaker 1: The pro Pluto side tried to change the definition of
Speaker 1: a planet to be something. It's not because they were
Speaker 1: so desperate to keep Pluto a planet, but their definition
Speaker 1: would add two hundred more planets to our Solar system.
Speaker 1: The pro Pluto faction, by the way, is dominated by
Speaker 1: people who were involved in the nass omission to Pluto
Speaker 1: when they launched, Pluto was a planet. By the time
Speaker 1: they got there, it wasn't. Philip Metzger. It's cultural, it's
Speaker 1: not scientific. What else in nature is like that. I mean,
Speaker 1: we don't say there have to be only nine mountains,
Speaker 1: nine rivers, nine types of beetles. In elementary school, we
Speaker 1: were told that there are nine planets. That's it. Should
Speaker 1: it be taught as more of an evolving concept, Philip Metzger. Yeah, Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: when we're taught that there are only eight planets and
Speaker 1: these planets rain in their orbits, we're harkening back to
Speaker 1: the old geocentric concept. This outdated idea is just the simple,
Speaker 1: orderly monocentric and these planets are like gods. They rain
Speaker 1: in their orbit. We're arguing, need to teach that it's
Speaker 1: a dynamic cosmos. Things change, things evolve, planets can change
Speaker 1: their orbit. Scientists have hypothesized that there might be a
Speaker 1: replacement for Pluto, so called planet nine, but that's not
Speaker 1: just because they want a replacement for Pluto, right Mike Brown,
Speaker 1: Right now, the existence of planet nine is a very
Speaker 1: good hypothesis to explain a lot of things we're seeing
Speaker 1: out there that we have no other explanation for but
Speaker 1: until the day that we point a telescope at it
Speaker 1: and see it and say, ah, there it is. It
Speaker 1: is just the best hypothesis to explain these phenomena. In
Speaker 1: the end, Why do you think people have such an
Speaker 1: attachment to Pluto and a resistance to Planet nine or
Speaker 1: other possible replacements, Philip Metzger. All I can say is
Speaker 1: when the New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto, it was amazing.
Speaker 1: I was at Johns Hopkins University where they had the
Speaker 1: control center when they put up the pictures for the
Speaker 1: first time. It was just so bread taking and geologically diverse.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are mountains as tall as the Rocky Mountains,
Speaker 1: and there are glaciers flowing, and there's a layered atmosphere,
Speaker 1: and there's probably an underground ocean, and there's organic material
Speaker 1: the building blocks of life all over the surface of
Speaker 1: the planet. Not only is Pluto a planet, but it's
Speaker 1: also more of another Earth than any other. It's the
Speaker 1: most planet like planet. Mike Brown, I have an attachment
Speaker 1: to Pluto. When I was growing up. It was this weird,
Speaker 1: mysterious thing at the edge of the Solar System. Who
Speaker 1: would not think it's kind of weird and small and cute,
Speaker 1: and now we've seen pictures of it. It is kind
Speaker 1: of a cool looking thing. It's a cool place. Next,
Speaker 1: what can we learn from the genius of beavers? By
Speaker 1: Ben Goldfarb. First there were peals, then pests, but now
Speaker 1: they are emerging as something else, climate heroes. The East
Speaker 1: Troublesome Fire erupt it on October twenty u Wine twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Whipped by strong winds and fueled by drought parched forests,
Speaker 1: the fire roared through northern Colorado's spruce and fir woods.
Speaker 1: It leaped roads and rivers and the Continental Divide, scaling
Speaker 1: mountain passes above tree line. It incinerated historic buildings in
Speaker 1: Rocky Mountain National Park and homes in Grand County, killing
Speaker 1: two people. Ultimately, it torched nearly two hundred thousand acres,
Speaker 1: making it the second largest fire in Colorado's history. In
Speaker 1: the end, just about the only thing the East Troublesome
Speaker 1: didn't consume was beaver ponds. This was not entirely surprising. Beavers,
Speaker 1: of course built dams that store water, and water, as
Speaker 1: you may know, doesn't burn. But the benefit the semi
Speaker 1: aquatic rodents provide goes further than that. In a study
Speaker 1: published weeks before the East Troublesome blew up, Emily Fairfax
Speaker 1: and eco hydrologists now at the University of Minnesota, found
Speaker 1: that beaver ponds and canals irrigate the landscape so thoroughly
Speaker 1: that they turned crisp of flammable plants into lush, fireproof ones,
Speaker 1: forming green refuges in which wildlife and livestock can retreat.
Speaker 1: In a nod to another firefighting icon, Fairfax and her
Speaker 1: co author titled their paper Smokey the Beaver. Fairfax studied
Speaker 1: five fires between two thousand twenty eighteen to reach her conclusions,
Speaker 1: but the East Troublesome was far bigger than most of
Speaker 1: those places, and a harbinger of the kind of conflagration
Speaker 1: worth seeing more and more. Although fire has long been
Speaker 1: a natural force of regeneration on North American landscapes, the
Speaker 1: so called megafires that plague the ever drier West are
Speaker 1: a different matter, stoked by climate change into exclusive infernos
Speaker 1: that burn so big and hot that ecosystems don't always
Speaker 1: readily recover. Fairfax doubted whether beavers could still fireproof large
Speaker 1: tracts of the landscape under those conditions, But when she
Speaker 1: visited the charred forests left behind by the Ear Troublesome
Speaker 1: and one other megafire, she discovered that the oases beavers
Speaker 1: created with their ponds had endured. There are entire rivers
Speaker 1: that are basically unaffected by the fire because it's just
Speaker 1: beaver dams the whole way, she said. Everything is full
Speaker 1: of life. The reeds are growing, the pine needles are
Speaker 1: still on the trees. The ponds aren't merely helpful before
Speaker 1: a fire. They can also protect ecosystems from the effects
Speaker 1: that come right after a blaze, capturing the ash and
Speaker 1: debris that run off hill slopes and shielding downstream fish
Speaker 1: and drinking water. In a twenty twenty four paper describing
Speaker 1: their findings, Fairfax and her collaborators concluded that beavers can
Speaker 1: be part of a comprehensive fire mitigation strategy. Once hunted
Speaker 1: to near extinction for their pelts and later villainized as
Speaker 1: a nuisance, beavers have rebounded. There are now ten to
Speaker 1: fifteen million swimming and waddling across most of North America,
Speaker 1: and they're ready for their third act us in an
Speaker 1: improbable roll. Ecological saviors to a climate change ravaged world,
Speaker 1: and fire mitigation is just the start. By building dams
Speaker 1: that slow stream flow, they create reservoirs that help combat drought.
Speaker 1: By sculpting wetlands, they furnish habitat for other animals. Nowhere
Speaker 1: is their return more necessary than in the climate stressed
Speaker 1: American West, where beaver restoration is unfolding to some extent
Speaker 1: in every state. But beaver's tireless meddlers with a penchant
Speaker 1: for running a foul of human infrastructure aren't yet universally welcome.
Speaker 1: The San Pedro River snakes across Arizona's border with Mexico
Speaker 1: through the sun blasted Sonoran Desert, though the arid land
Speaker 1: seems better suited for rattlesnakes than for semi aquatic rodents.
Speaker 1: Frontiersmen once knew the San Pedro as the Beaver River,
Speaker 1: before nineteenth century trappers stripped it clean anywhere there were
Speaker 1: perennial waters there, or probably beaver's lisas by Spypeck, the
Speaker 1: director of a non prophet called the Watershed Management Group,
Speaker 1: told me one fall day along the San Pedro's cobble
Speaker 1: strewn banks in nineteen ninety nine, in hopes of enhancing
Speaker 1: the area's Wildlife habitat the Federal Bureau of Land Management
Speaker 1: restocked the San Pedro with sixteen beavers, whose offspring dispersed
Speaker 1: throughout the river, including into Mexico. Since twenty twenty twenty, Spypeck,
Speaker 1: along with Mexican biologists and legions of volunteers, has been
Speaker 1: scouring the river to estimate their population. I joined her
Speaker 1: team for a day of surveying the San Pedro's shady
Speaker 1: cottonwood galleries for beavers. Shue marks, treks and lodges. Along
Speaker 1: the trunk of one downed cottonwood, beavers had chiseled away
Speaker 1: the bark to expose cream colored heartwood and whittled limbs
Speaker 1: to blunt points. Pale chips littered the bank. They were
Speaker 1: probably here within the last few weeks. Spypeck half whispered
Speaker 1: cezy to emphaths empathize with beaver. Like many of us,
Speaker 1: they live in nuclear families. A typical colony consists of
Speaker 1: a breeding pear and their offspring, which stick around until
Speaker 1: the age of two. On land, beavers are clumsy morsels
Speaker 1: for cougars, wolves, and bears, but their balletic swimmers endowed
Speaker 1: with transparent eyelids and webbed hind feet, Their keratins, scaled
Speaker 1: tails serve as fat storage units, and rudders. Their iron
Speaker 1: reinforced teeth scrape away the inner bark that provides the
Speaker 1: bulk of their herbivorous diet. By building dams and filling
Speaker 1: ponds around their woody lodges, beavers expand and defend their
Speaker 1: aquatic domains like feudal lords with moats around castles. Like humans, too,
Speaker 1: beavers are survivors, just as Homo sapiens are the last
Speaker 1: and a long line of hominins. The world's two beaver species,
Speaker 1: Castor canadensis, the North American beaver, and Castor fiber its
Speaker 1: Eurasian cousin, are vestiges of a diverse family. They are
Speaker 1: now extend Relatives include castory Days ohioensis, which grew nearly
Speaker 1: as large as black bears. Although it's tempting to imagine
Speaker 1: the custory Days constructing hoover dam side walls, these species
Speaker 1: likely didn't dam at all and died out during drier conditions.
Speaker 1: Modern beavers may have endured precisely because they could modify
Speaker 1: nature on a warming climate. As beavers proliferated, they shaped
Speaker 1: the land. At one time, as many as four hundred
Speaker 1: million of them roamed North America and constructed up to
Speaker 1: two hundred fifty million ponds. Those beaver built bodies of water,
Speaker 1: bolstered amphibian and salmon populations, supported mammals from muskrat to moose,
Speaker 1: and aided songbirds, which perch in coppiced willows and eat
Speaker 1: aquatic insects. Indigenous peoples have long understood beaver's importance. The
Speaker 1: Blackfeet environmental historian Rosalind Lapierre notes that the tribe believes
Speaker 1: beavers are divine animals that can talk with humans and
Speaker 1: venerates them for the ecological oases they create. But colonists
Speaker 1: didn't share that respect, and the fifteen hundreds beaver pelts
Speaker 1: came into vogue in Europe. They were used for elegant hats,
Speaker 1: which milliners felted from beavers velcrow like underfur. To meet
Speaker 1: the demand, fur, trappers and traders purged beavers from practically
Speaker 1: every waterway on the continent. As the animal vanished, wetlands
Speaker 1: dried up, and streams eroded, a cataclysm akin to an
Speaker 1: aquatic dust bowl. Yet beavers weren't finished. In the early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, many states enacted trapping restrictions and reintroduced beavers
Speaker 1: from places like Canada and Yellowstone National Park. Some land
Speaker 1: managers got creative. In nineteen forty eight, the Idaho Department
Speaker 1: of Fish and Game packed beavers into crates and dropped
Speaker 1: them by parachute into the wilderness. Two years later, the
Speaker 1: Journal of Wildlife man Management reported that beavers had built dams,
Speaker 1: constructed houses, stored up food, and were well on their
Speaker 1: way to producing colonies. As beavers have slowly returned to
Speaker 1: the West over the past several decades, their helpfulness has
Speaker 1: grown more appreciated. Just as our climate woes have multiplied,
Speaker 1: their ponds store and gradually release rainfall in snow melt,
Speaker 1: compensating for dwindling snowpack by allowing water to seep into floodplains.
Speaker 1: They also hydrate soils and recharge aquifers. Two study that
Speaker 1: tracked relocated beavers in Washington State found that the average
Speaker 1: pond stored more than a quarter million gallons of surface
Speaker 1: water and over six hundred thousand gallons of groundwater. Beavers
Speaker 1: are slowing the flow, holding on to water longer and
Speaker 1: mimicking the function of the depleted snowpack, says Joe Wheaton.
Speaker 1: A geomorphologist at Utah State University. This concludes readings from
Speaker 1: National Geographic Magazine for today. Your reader has been Marsha.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening, Keep on listening, and have a
Speaker 1: great day.