Leave it to beavers! How these rodents damn wildfires
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Crews have successfully smothered much of the Flanders Fire in Crow Wing County and completely contained the Stewart Trail Fire near Two Harbors.
Man-made firebreaks, like dozer lines created by heavy machinery and hand lines dug by firefighters, help stop flames from spreading — but so do natural barriers like beaver ponds.
Emily Fairfax, assistant professor of geography at the University of Minnesota, says while there’s a good number of beavers in Minnesota, they’re not evenly distributed and are less common nearer to the Twin Cities compared to their abundance in the Boundary Waters.
Beaver ponds help stop wildfires because they both slow down and spread out water, giving it time to sink into the soil.
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“We get a lot of precipitation here in Minnesota, but more and more it's coming in these big, flashy events, a storm, and then that water rushes through and it's gone,” Fairfax said. “So, instead of just having this quick-moving blast of water, you get this great big sponge that is the earth filling up with water and staying too wet to burn.”
Man-made firebreaks are created to be as wide and connected as possible.
“And that's actually the beaver's No. 1 goal, is to make a great big wide connected wetland that maybe spans for kilometers and kilometers and kilometers. They're basically building firebreaks out of every single stream they work on,” Fairfax continued.
Listen to the full conversation and learn about ways to conserve beaver habitats by clicking the player button above.
