by Chelsea Stewart-Fusek Cascadia Wildlands Legal Intern, Summer 2020 The North American beaver (Castor canadensis) is a primarily nocturnal, semi-aquatic rodent that is known as an ecosystem engineer because its dam-building behavior drastically changes the habitat in which it lives. Beavers are also considered a keystone species because their removal has far-reaching impacts on other … Continue reading INTERN-al VIEW: No Longer the “Beaver State”- The Quest to Protect Oregon’s Beavers
Guest View: Beavers and the Twisting of Sustainability
Opinion piece in the Register Guard from Ernie Niemi. Learn more about the benefits of beavers in Cascadia. By Ernie Niemi If somebody says they’re using Oregon’s natural resources in a sustainable manner, that’s good, right? Not always. Some folks use the word as a deceptive cover for activities that actually aren’t sustainable. When they do, … Continue reading Guest View: Beavers and the Twisting of Sustainability
Protecting Ecosystem Engineers
Beavers are known as “ecosystem engineers”, or “nature’s architects”, because their dam-building work has such a huge effect on the habitats around them. Beavers critically influence the ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest and play a fundamental role in creating and maintaining a diversity of flora and fauna associated with Oregon’s streams, rivers, and wetlands. Prior … Continue reading Protecting Ecosystem Engineers
Save Our Wild Salmon Heritage
Cascadia is a bioregion defined by the northeastern Pacific Ocean and the associated watersheds. Those watersheds are filled with rivers, creeks and rivulets and many of those waterways were filled with salmon and steelhead. So salmon—in a very real sense—once defined the place we live in and love. If we continue to squander this precious … Continue reading Save Our Wild Salmon Heritage