In this age of global weirding where climate disruption has tumbled the Goldilocks effect into unruly surges of too much and too little water, the restoration of beavers offers ancient nature-based solutions to the tangle of challenges bedeviling human civilization. Droughts, floods, soil erosion, climate change, biodiversity loss – you name it, and beaver is on it.
In this episode, Kate Lundquist and Brock Dolman of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center share their semi-aquatic journey to becoming Beaver Believers. They are part of a passionate global movement to bring back our rodent relatives who show us how to heal nature by working with nature.
This is an episode of Nature’s Genius, a Bioneers podcast series exploring how the sentient symphony of life holds the solutions we need to balance human civilization with living systems. Visit the series page to learn more.
Featuring
Kate Lundquist, co-director of the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center’s WATER Institute and the Bring Back the Beaver Campaign in Sonoma County, is a conservationist, educator and ecological artist who works with landowners, communities and resource agencies to uncover obstacles, identify strategic solutions, and generate restoration recommendations to assure healthy watersheds, water security, listed species recovery and climate change resiliency.
Brock Dolman, co-founded (in 1994) the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center where he co-directs the WATER Institute. A wildlife biologist and watershed ecologist, he has been actively promoting “Bringing Back Beaver in California” since the early 2000s. He was given the Salmonid Restoration Federation’s coveted Golden Pipe Award in 2012: “…for his leading role as a proponent of “working with beavers” to restore native habitat.
Resources
Beaver Believer: How Massive Rodents Could Restore Landscapes and Ecosystems At Scale
Fire and Water: Land and Watershed Management in the Age of Climate Change
Brock Dolman – Basins of Relations: A Reverential Rehydration Revolution
From Kingdom to Kin-dom: Acting As If We Have Relatives Brock Dolman, Paul Stamets and Brian Thomas Swimme
The WATER Institute’s Beaver in California reader
Bioneers – Where Water, Flows Life Thrives - Ensuring Drought Resilience and Water Security for Farms, People and Ecosystems
Credits
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Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel
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Written by: Kenny Ausubel
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Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch
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Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris
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Producer: Teo Grossman
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Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey
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Production Assistance: Monica Lopez
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Graphic Designer: Megan Howe
Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature 