Beavers are the cure we don't want to take.

No matter how much we improve our grazing, no matter how many water-control structures we build, our streams and other watercourses will cut deeper and deeper into the landscape, robbing us of soil and drying out our pastures and fields.

It took me many years of study and observation to come to this point in my thinking, but today there is no longer any question in my mind. Read on and you'll learn why I say so.

I'm almost 60 years old and throughout those years I've watched the streams cut deeper and deeper into the soil near my home. On my uncle and aunt's farm, the little rocky crossing we walked across and drove tractors across and rode horses across without a thought disappeared years ago into a gulch. The entire creek today is much deeper than it was, and so is every other creek, stream and wash I know of.

Further, I've traveled much of the nation and heard again and again people lament how they could drive their pickups across "this creek almost anywhere," yet today they are facing deep gulches. All this has occurred without any great soil loss nearby. It just seems to have been the natural course of events.

And yet it could not be a natural thing, for if it were natural to lose creek bed at such a rapid pace in only 50 years, those streams should be hundreds of feet deep just since the last ice age. Certainly they would all have been cut well into bedrock long before our European ancestors arrived here.

As I watched this happening and studied grazing management and ecology and agriculture, I rarely heard any explanations, except perhaps that large herds of bison infrequently crossed the smaller of these streams, which helped break the banks over smooth and encouraged the deep-rooted native grasses to thrive and protect the soils, while fires kept trees rare. I can give this credence, but it's not nearly enough of an answer.

I've also been out many times to see SCS/NRCS erosion-control structures, and streamside tree plantings, and bermudagrass-sprigged waterways alongside terraced farmland. Not one of these things have any lasting effect.

My first "a-ha" moment happened when I read several articles by Bill Zeedyk about soil hydrology and how his efforts in the west were improving soil hydrology by such minimalist efforts as building one-rock dams to change water flow. In one article, he wrote about how the shallowest of ditches in his native New Mexico are seriously draining large expanses of land. I mused how much our own system of "bar ditches" along every road along every square mile in most of Oklahoma must be drying our soils. It makes sense, once you begin to understand seeps and springs, and if you drive along roads that have been cut into hillsides and you see the water oozing or sometimes gushing out of crevices in the soil or rocks after a rain.

Old roofers say to make a house roof watertight you must think like a raindrop. The path of least resistance, the way of gravity. Any water not captured by organic materials and soil life will escape by gravity. More ditches and deeper ditches make the escape easier and quicker.

Think about it: Farmers cut ditches to dry out their fields and put pipes in them to keep to keep the flow open (called tiling). It works!

So the question, I reasoned, was what process had previously stopped this from being a natural course of events that outpaced the normal upturn of new soil through movement of the earth's crust?

In North America, the only answer I've ever found was ... beavers! They once lived by the millions in every state in the union, and new evidence says their homeland stretched across much of Mexico and into the arctic tundra of Canada. I have more recently learned beavers also were common across Europe and Asia.

Anyone who has ever traversed country truly populated by beavers knows how much silt is trapped in those dams. I have fished behind beaver dams and I tell you they are a silty, mucky mess, they hold back immense amounts of water and they are full of life.

Put another way, beaver dams are like settling basins for sewage. The puddling and stillness of the water allows particles to settle and collect. In turn, the beavers keep building their dams deeper and the creeks get shallower.

Further, I remembered I had a friend who was into mountain man tales and lore when young and he once explained to me that mountain men were originally plainsmen. They only went into the mountains after they had trapped the beavers into extinction from the lowlands.

Newer research says I'm right about the impact of beavers on sedimentation, and a recent study using ground-penetrating radar and "near-surface seismic refraction" to analyze long-gone beaver dams is one example. A story in the online magazine Seeker in 2012 addresses the study and what it potentially means.

One such study area is known as Beaver Meadows in Rocky Mountain National Park, and though devoid of beavers today, the scientists said old beaver dam sedimentation was aged from 180 to 4,300 years previous, and the beavers appeared to contribute 30-50% of the post-glacial soil sediments in the area.

More ecologists are beginning to measure the effect of beavers on siltation and stream beds, although I have found no one measuring the surrounding soil moisture content. Everywhere I could find studies, they all measured significant buildup of sedimentation, and the only argument seems to be how much is captured.

This study by the University of Nebraska suggests I am right, but of course without long-term measurements they have no distinct answers.

Another study in the coastal plain of Virginia and North Carolina suggests similar results.

This study in Belgium with European beavers showed significant collection of sediments behind the dams.

With all this in our knowledge base now, it seems if beavers were the agent of change and good in streams for hundreds of thousands of years before we arrived, then they could be and should be again. They work day and night, like the cow, without us lifting a finger.

I understand that beavers are a pain in the neck, but so is erosion and droughty land.

Clearly they need to be kept out of human-constructed water bodies such as ponds, and wrapping trees you want to save in chicken wire or similar protection is a real annoyance. Sometimes the little critters flood too much area. Sometimes their dams fail and flood things we don't want flooded.

Yet the key to the equation I'm proposing requires a long-term view. Where have we been? What have we accomplished? What have we lost? What do we want to make better for our children and their great-grandchildren? What advantages could we gain?

I have no particular love for beavers, but I do love the land and God's creation. It's my understanding we are to be stewards in His image. So here I stand, saying kind things about one of the most hated creatures in the world of agriculture.