The American West is among the largest arid and semi-arid regions of the United States. Like many other global systems, the drylands of the American West are not exempt from increasing human disturbance and rapidly growing climate change, which leads to a reduction in biodiversity by reducing the terrestrial habitats available for plants and animals, and requires work to protect and preserve nature in order to save what It can be saved, biodiversity restored.
Hence, the importance of the study published in the journal “Bioscience” entitled “Rebuilding the American West”, noting that restoring the habitats of gray wolves and beavers can produce strong and large-scale environmental impacts, and thus revive the ecosystem again.
According to the study conducted by a research team led by Oregon State University, beavers work as high-class environmental engineers; They can build dams to create pools of water for them to live in.
Beavers weave branches together, cut trees with their teeth, insulate mud bricks, and dig channels to bring water from large bodies of water to their feeding area, thus enriching fish habitats, increasing water retention, keeping them flowing during droughts, and improving water quality. .
Beavers also improve the habitats of plant and animal species on the banks of the river in general. Likewise, wolves provide significant environmental benefits by helping to naturally control native ungulates such as elk; Wolves facilitate the re-growth of plant species, thus helping to have balanced plant and animal communities.
Some do not appreciate the environmental benefits of wolves and beavers, while underestimating the environmental impacts of grazing livestock, even though it is the most common environmental threat; Livestock grazing can degrade streams and wetlands, affect fire systems, and make it difficult for woody species, especially willow, to regenerate.
The study confirms that rehabilitating beavers is a cost-effective way to restore areas adjacent to degraded watercourses, and that although these areas represent less than 2% of the land in the West, they provide home to 70% of wildlife species.
The researchers were also surprised by the large number of endangered species present in the western United States, where the current range of the gray wolf in those eleven states has shrunk to only about 14% of its historical range, and may one day number in the tens of thousands.
(Scientific American)