It's the Damn Dam

Nature finds a way to survive all kinds of catastrophic events – except one.  Humans.  Beavers have been creating natural irrigation systems and firebreaks for millennia.  In might be time to turn some forest management back to natures dam builders. 

Fairfax found that vegetation along sections of a river without dams burned straight to the river’s edge. But for sections with a resident beaver, “essentially, the plants don’t know a fire is happening.” The channels dug by beavers acted like irrigation channels, said Fairfax, keeping vegetation too wet to burn, even during drought. In all, stretches of river without beavers lost 51% of their vegetation greenness, compared with a 19% reduction for sections with beavers.