The thing about it is this public appreciation of beavers is pretty new. SCOTT: I mean, I got to admit, I'm obsessed with beavers a bit, Emily. SCOTT: Not to mention see-through eyelids and two sets of lips. They've got orange teeth, dams with actual rooms, tails like tennis rackets that they slap on the water to indicate danger. KWONG: So, Aaron Scott, I am not kidding you when I say that team SHORT WAVE has wanted to do an episode on beavers for years. You're listening to SHORT WAVE, the daily science podcast from NPR. SCOTT: So today on the show - how some scientists learned to stop worrying and love the beaver. I mean, historically, beavers have had a pretty bad rap, but now we're kind of in a beaver renaissance. KWONG: Because their dams, while very cool, also flood fields and roads and backyards. But don't a lot of states also classify beavers as kind of pests?
WATHEN: The impacts that these ecosystem engineers can have to create a wetland is second to none, really.
SCOTT: Gus and I climbed up this big beaver dam that's all overgrown with willows and grass and peer out at a huge pond full of cattails. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: There are some beaver tracks in the mud there. So Bridge Creek is full of salmon and steelhead today because, in the last decade, these scientists have been experimenting with a revolutionary idea - to follow in the footsteps of nature's engineer - the beaver. KWONG: Wait a minute - if Oregon was really hot last summer, why is this creek full of fish? Fields baked, and streams dried up, or they flowed so hot that the fish died, but you wouldn't know it from the unbridled joy of these of biologists. I was there filming for the nature show, "Oregon Field Guide," and this was last August, during one of the worst droughts the Pacific Northwest has ever seen. SCOTT: We're wading up a small stream in eastern Oregon called Bridge Creek. But I'm guessing these scientists are gathering salmon and steelhead specifically for some purpose. KWONG: As far as fishing goes, this kind of sounds like cheating. WATHEN: There's our first steelhead of the day, No. But just temporarily, and that allows the other three biologists to scoop up the fish with nets and drop them in a bucket - or at least, in this case, the salmon and the steelhead. It looks kind of like a backpack out of "Ghostbusters," and it runs an electrical current down the poles, into the water, that stuns the fish. One of the biologists, Gus Wathen, is walking through the water with two poles, yes, but they're attached by wires to a device on his back.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "OREGON FIELD GUIDE") Emily, this is the sound of a bunch of biologists going fishing.