The many million dollars proposed for the improvement of water systems in Greater Vernon could be sharply decreased by applying indigenous ecological knowledge.
Currently, our valley is portrayed as a region that sheds water, and, truthfully, many of our streambeds are dry. For this, we have to thank the fur traders, not nature.
Before trapping, there were more than 60 million beavers in North America. They are the water keepers. Indigenous people sacrificed them because they needed vital trade goods to survive in the new non-indigenous North America, yet they knew very well the huge price being paid.
Experiments in reintroducing beavers have had inspiring results. In Alberta, they have increased open water retention by 60 per cent. In Nevada, they have restored dry streams, like the gullies running down into Vernon from the hills, to year-long ones, right down into the desert floor.
Alberta trials have also shown that beaver habitat naturally cleans water of excess nitrogen from agricultural run-off, without any further treatment necessary.
“Beaver Fever” has been shown to be a myth, a disease caused more often by cattle and, most often, by humans than by beavers. Trials in Ontario show that trout in beaver ponds are larger than those in streams and that ponds provide shelter for large individuals during drought.
Trials in the Coldwater River, one of our regional rivers, have shown that salmon survival and spawning is higher in beaver habitat. A recent trial in Oregon’s John Day Valley, a region formed at the same time as the Okanagan and with the same climate and similar geography, restored two vertical feet of lost streambed, increased grazing land and bear and deer habitat from zero to 100 metres from the streams, and increased steelhead spawning numbers by 20 per cent, all within five years.
Currently, higher altitude trials are underway in the Methow, one of our sister valleys in Northern Washington.
All in all, beavers can store water, release it slowly through the year, clean it, and deliver it to the valley floor, while maintaining rich plant, animal, bird and fish communities. The cost? Almost none.
There would be a small decrease in timber values (offset by increased availability of water to other timber), a small decrease in grazing land (offset by increases of sub-irrigated land in currently dry areas), and some adjustments for private property owners and road construction and maintenance contracts.
The benefits, however, would include greater retention of water, year-round availability of water, decreased loss of water to evaporation, increased wildlife, bird and fish habitat, cleaner water, and rich, properly-functioning landscapes capable of withstanding global warming and of sustaining our children for generations.
Piped water would still be necessary, of course, but not at the expense or in the volumes demanded by current models. If the reintroduction of beavers was accompanied by a program to shift cool season or short season crops up into the high country, the huge loss of water due to evaporation in the extreme-evaporation zone of our valley bottom would lead to increased agricultural production at a fraction of water use, with incredibly low delivery costs.
Cycling water through the extreme evaporation zone of Okanagan Lake, to clean it by plankton, is hugely wasteful in comparison.
Low-evaporation water use is also indigenous technology, learned by people who gardened and wild-crafted in valley bottoms and in the high country, depending on seasonal evaporation rates.
These technologies are not only inexpensive but deeply respectful of the wisdom of generations both past and to come. It is time to partner with our indigenous elders to save all of us from the wastes and inefficiencies within our current water systems, which are, basically, 19th century water technology.
It is time not only for human reasons but also for purely economic ones.
In terms of water, we have currently exceeded the population capacity of the Okanagan.
Beavers allow us to repair that imbalance. They are the water keepers.
Harold Rhenisch
Vernon
