Dash Paulson
Cascadia Alumni Profile - Published September 25, 2024
Outfitted with chest waders and motion camera equipment in a waterproof backpack, Dash Paulson slowly navigated through the waters of North Creek Wetland to visit our resident beaver family this past spring. Paulson, a former student who took several of Cascadia's wetland and sustainability classes, used drones to capture seasonal changes of the wetland and installed wildlife cameras to monitor beaver activity for his capstone project at UW Bothell.
“Beavers are ecosystem engineers, talented wetland makers from a young age. They fell trees, dig ditches, and build leaky dams to create ponds that store floods and shorten droughts,” Paulson explains. “The aquatic habitats they build, and relentlessly maintain, also improve water quality because sediment and pollutants can settle out of the slow moving water and become trapped in the soil. That means better water quality downstream of their dam complexes
In addition to documenting the construction activities of these wetland vegetarians, Paulson caught two beavers on camera pushing each other back and forth in a pond behind the family lodge as a young beaver circled around them, taking in the action. Scientists believe that wrestling matches like these may help beavers learn and refine their defense skills and teach their young how to fight off competitors.
“The beaver lodge on North Creek is surrounded on three sides by water, just like a moat, and there’s at least three beavers living there, two adult parents, at least one yearling, and maybe some kits!” Paulson says, “ Beaver kits are born fully furred with their eyes open, but they’re too fluffy and buoyant to dive -- they literally can’t leave the lodge through the underwater entrance until they’re big enough to sink, so they have to be brought food. I have video footage of the parents bringing in leafy stems for them to eat.”
“Beavers and humans are the only two species on earth who dramatically change their environment to suit their particular needs. For people, water can block our access to resources, but for beavers the water is the access, so they spread it out and slow it down as much as they can with sticks, mud, rocks, and sheer determination. The shallow habitat they create support dozens of species of plants, insects, amphibia, fish, and waterfowl. They are masters at developing wildlife habitat.”
Dash recently finished a Certificate in Wetland Science and Management from the UW, a post bachelor’s certificate for those interested in protecting and restoring wetlands.
“One of the most important things I’ve learned from studying at Cascadia and the North Creek wetland is that wetlands are like armor against climate change: they reduce flood waves, make land more resilient against wildfire, improve water quality, and are essential habitat for hundreds of species in North America alone. I think they’re the most valuable places on earth.”