Guest Essay by Kip Hansen
Oh those busy, busy beavers — aren’t they great? There’s the little guy in the corner of the photo, he and his pals built that dam that slowed the stream and produced a large shallow beaver pond. The American beaver is a keystone species on the North American continent in that modifies the environment in such a way that the overall ecosystem builds upon the change. The ponds, wetlands, and meadows formed by beaver dams increases bio-diversity and improves overall environmental quality.
This lovely active creature has been accused — in the NY Times Science /Climate section by Kendra “Gloom is My Beat” Pierre-Louis [seriously, that’s her real Twitter handle] — in an article with the anti-Darwinian title of “Beavers Emerge as Agents of Arctic Destruction”.
This is a marvelous piece of CAGW propaganda based on the AGU Poster presented by Ben Jones, Ken Tape and others at the recent 2017 AGU meeting in New Orleans. The poster made a splash in the press, including an article in the blog Earther with the amusing title of “Hordes of Beavers Are Invading Alaska’s Tundra”.
It is true that the beaver are making a comeback in the great northern reaches of North America. It is not, however news, and has been well discussed in the literature since as early as 2009.
Thomas Jung and others describe the situation:
“Jarema et al. (2009) demonstrated that beaver respond strongly to climate warming, both by expanding its range and by increasing its abundance at the core of its range. in terms of range expansion, beavers are similar to moose (Tape et al. 2016b) and Snowshoe hare (Tape et al. 2016a) in that they would be expected to benefit from shrubification of tundra environments be – cause they can forage extensively on shrubs (Aleksiuk 1970; Busher 1996), and they also use shrubs as building materials for their lodges and dams (Jung and Staniforth 2010). Given that shrubification of the Beaufort Coastal Plain is underway (Myers-Smith et al. 2011b; Naito and Cairns 2015; Tape et al. 2016a) and has likely increased habitat suitability for beavers, it is plausible that they could colonize waterbodies there, once barriers to colonization (i.e., mountain passes or the ocean) were successfully crossed.”
Those clever beavers somehow have managed to find their way to the spot marked on Canada’s Beaufort Plain — without any suitable habitat through which to travel.
The American beaver has a distinct connection to the history of European settlement of North America (United States and Canada). It was mostly because of a hat, this hat:
That’s the beaver top hat — all the craze in all of Europe in the 1600-1700s.
Between 1600 and 1800, Europe was in the thrall of the beaver hat, every man simply had to have a beaver hat. Women too wore hats made of beaver felt.
A single high quality hat required 2 to 3 beaver pelts according to a description of the process online here.
Hudson Bay Company records show that that between 1700 and 1770 alone, 21 million beaver hats were exported from England alone (not including domestic consumption of beaver hats nor beaver pelts also known to be exported to other European countries) — using up to 60 MILLION beaver pelts. This figure does not include the number of beaver pelts shipped to Europe by the French voyagers trading companies nor the America Fur Company founded by John Jacob Astor.
The end of the beaver hat craze did not come for many more years but eventually, by 1840, the silk top hat had replaced the beaver hat in Europe.
By that time, in North America, the beaver had been entirely trapped out of most of its range, dropping from populations as high as 60 million to an estimate as low as six million. Luckily, beavers live remote areas and rough terrain and by the mid-1800s, their value having dropped, they were saved from extinction — but only after they had been extirpated from most areas of North America, including the far north.
Since that time, the beaver has been slowly fighting its way back into the American landscape, often to the consternation of their humans neighbors. This is true where I live now, at the foot of the Catskill Mountains on the west side of the Central Hudson River Valley of New York, beavers dam up tiny streams on expensive land, flooding the flat places where owners wish to build half-million dollar homes.
Not everyone is angry with the little busy beavers though, the Lands Council considers the beaver “as a silver-bullet solution to our natural resource and environmental health concerns.” NPR’s PBS’s NATURE program has a wonderful episode on beavers titled “Leave it to Beavers” in which are shown to be “as natural builders and brilliant hydro-engineers, beavers are being recruited to accomplish everything from finding water in a bone-dry desert to recharging water tables and coaxing life back into damaged lands.”
While the Tape and Jones AGU poster was mostly negative about the Arctic beavers and the effects they would have, Tape was more even handed when speaking to The Earther, which reports:
“Research shown at last week’s American Geophysical Union meeting revealed that everyone’s favorite rodent has been using sticks to build dams on the Alaska’s treeless tundra. The colonization is reshaping the geography of the north and could allow other animals to follow beavers into the brave new warming world.”
Why the beavers are moving into the tundra is an open question. Climate change may play a role, but it’s highly speculative at this point. Ken Tape, a University of Alaska, Fairbanks researcher working on the project, said it’s difficult to know if trappers hunted beavers off the tundra prior to the start of the aerial photography.
“Beavers may be changing the Arctic, but I’d bet there’d be as many (or more) winners as losers,” Ben Goldfarb, a journalist working on a book about beavers slated to come out next year, told Earther. “As other species move north with climate change, are arctic beavers actually helping them adapt?” Goldfarb suggested moose might be one species to benefit. Beaver ponds could allow more willows, a favorite food of moose, to prosper in the harsh landscape and give them the ability to branch out into new areas.”
Bottom Line:
I’m with Ben Goldfarb. The re-introduction of beavers into the landscapes of the far north do not represent destruction — on the contrary, they represent a restoration.
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Author’s Comment Policy:
Love to read and respond to your on-topic, civil comments.
What do you think?
Beavers as pesky, habitat-destroying interlopers? or
Beavers as habitat restoration agents?
Let me hear from you below.
If you want me to respond specifically to a question or comment, address it to “Kip…” so I am sure to see it.
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Just 11,000 years ago, the giant beaver finally went extinct. It was one of the abundant Pleistocene megafauna—a wide variety of very large mammals that lived during the Pleistocene that all perished at the end of the last age. At least 38 mega fauna including the Wooly Mammoth, Camel, Horse, Short Faced Bear and Sabre Tooth Cat all went extinct around the same time frame all over North America, basically at once just as human were entering the NA continent. Something very catastrophic happened to cause all that, and nobody talks much about this. Some days I really wonder why this is. Is our common collective consciousness still so traumatized by previous recent events 11,000 years ago of such utter destruction that we are still to unable to come to grips with this, thinking it could happen to us? Was it the cold and starvation of CO2 being so low at 180 ppmv for so long that led to a massive near extinction of vegetation and habitat south of the ice sheets that led to such massive extinctions of all these mega fauna at once, all over the NA continent?
The species of Castoroides, also known as giant beavers, were much larger than modern beavers. Their average length was approximately 1.9 m (6.2 ft), and they could grow as large as 2.2 m (7.2 ft). The weight of the giant beaver could vary from 90 kg (198 lb) to 125 kg (276 lb). This makes it the largest known rodent in North America during the Pleistocene and the largest known beaver.
The ancient giant beaver and the modern day beaver have probably done as much or more than any animal to terraform the North America continent. That they are coming back, or even beginning to form new habitat in the far north should be valued as the best possible news ever. Wherever you find beavers, you find a very healthy ecosystem, and abundant water and other wildlife. This is also why I think that Ducks Unlimited is really one of the few credible practising environmental organizations out there, and why I support and work with them. They actually do something mainly positive, just like the beaver.
The Giant Beaver probably did not build dams. Fossil beaver dams/beaver ponds are not very rare, but nobody has ever found one that was larger or otherwise different from extant ones.
By the way in past warmer times beaver lived almost as far north as there is land in North America:
https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/Strathcona_Fiord.html
During Christmas, it will be very cold in North America.
http://pics.tinypic.pl/i/00952/ybu97hrfk793.png
It will be cold due to global warming.
Don’t you have any common sense my good man?
How is the air in the polar vortex moving now?
You can see that the stream runs from Siberia over Kamchatka, reaches the Canadian Archipelago and falls over the Hudson Bay. This means heavy winter in Canada.
http://files.tinypic.pl/i/00952/f03kyt21kzaq.png
Not ALL of North America. Here on the West Coast, the weather may be wet at times, but not terribly cold.
Simple solution: trap the beavers and feed them to the poor starving polar bears. Two problems solved!
/sarc (hopefully that tag wasn’t actually needed)
I’ve seen beaver stew on the menu in Šiauliai Lithuania and also around Quebec.
Tastes like chicken!
Kip,
Wonderful link re: HBC.
I’ll spend some time with it over the Holidays.
But am I reading right, that it took over 3,000 pelts to “buy” a rifle? Geez!
I recently found a small group of beavers (do they ever live solo?) along an urban creek, largely hidden from a nearby highway. Their lodge (if they had one) was washed by torrential rains this summer, but they are still gnawing away. It appears they can and will live in hillside dugouts.
Since they don’t eat turkey nor deer, I’m gonna leave then alone, but the game cam goes down this weekend.
Thanks again.
UK conservationists are busy re-introducing the European beaver to England and Scotland, because of it environmental benefit (creates wetlands which retain water longer: the change in the UK climate has resulted in more extreme/intense rainfall and increased flooding, which rapid run off makes worse).
The issue in Alaska however is definitely one of an indicator species showing local environmental conditions have shifted due to warming.
“the change in the UK climate has resulted in more extreme/intense rainfall and increased flooding”
Please show hard evidence in the form of non-modelled or adjusted data please Griff. Otherwise deniers like me will not believe you.
“Please show hard evidence in the form of non-modelled or adjusted data please Griff. Otherwise deniers like me will not believe you.”
I’ll do ot for him…..
Enter: UK, Rainfall, Annual.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/actualmonthly
This is a nice summary Ian, with links to the science
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28779-uk-rains-broke-river-flow-record-and-climate-change-is-to-blame/
Every year since 2000 with the strange exception of 2006 has seen an exceptional flood event in the UK.
Griff,
I am pleased you are still rational and coherent enough to admit beavers are good for the environment.
There may be hope for you yet.
“The issue in Alaska however is definitely one of an indicator species showing local environmental conditions have shifted due to warming.”
Is it really? I checked with my well-worn “Peterson Guide to the Mammals”, originally written in 1952 and according to that the range of the beaver reached the Arctic Ocean in the area indicated in the map even then.
Griff ==> Even Tape admits that the beaver may just be returning to its previous (pre-1900s) range. They do think that the shrubification of the southern tundra MAY be due to warming, or maybe CO2 fertilization.
@ur momisugly Griff,
A horse named “Griff” just ran at Gulfstream Park, it was a grey, you could almost call it white, long story short, it won at 7-1.
Thanks Griff for the …..forethought 🙂
u.k.(us) ==> Did you have the foresight to lay a handsome bet on “Griff”?
Of course, I love to bet out of spite 🙂
Beavers increase the H20 in the air, water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas. Perhaps the massive decline in beaver populations make the Little Ice Age worse.
For obvious reasons I thought this article would be about the idea that beaver dams cause global warming (they trap sediment which then creates methane).
Sceptic ==> The methane issue is a red herring — its concentrations are measured in parts per billion — decaying organic matter through microbial action creates methane. The more life, the more methane — the greener the planet, the more methane (plus whatever leaks from natural gas production.)
“Leave it to Beaver” Who was the actor?
Jerry Mathers.
Beavers being re-introduced to Scotland – hurray!
https://www.scottishbeavers.org.uk
“Hordes of Beavers Are Invading Alaska’s Tundra”
Really? Just a short observation based on limited experience (but perhaps more than some of the authors…). I have fished a river in sub-arctic western AK for 20 years, on and off. The surrounding area is full tundra but the river creates a micro-climate so, when lack of major flood destruction allows, there is a narrow band of scrubby woodland between the river channels and the tundra. Unsurprisingly, the scrubby stuff and small trees are what the beavers eat.
1) I haven’t noticed any differences in the thickness or height of the scrub/woodland over the 20 years;
2) the river has always held a good beaver population pretty much throughout its length. If anything, the population has increased over the 20 years and, in the upper reaches at least, you can get much closer to them than you used to even to the point that a group had built a lodge, and produced young, right next to the fishing camp.
So, have the beavers benefited from global warming? Unlikely. Their main predators are man and bears. The bears are doing fine but catching salmon and eating berries is less dangerous than attacking beavers and provides tons of food, for a few months of the year anyway. Man? Well, you only have to look at the decrepit state of old yupik hunting cabins up river to see that hunting and trapping isn’t nearly as popular as it used to be. Financial factors (not least the cost of fuel and the availability of state benefits) are often stated as the reasons.
I note, incidentally, no differences in overall climate and its effects on the timings of salmon runs – just variations caused by unusually warm or cold or early or late winters (which last 6 months + in that part of the world). In other words, no trend.
Ian ==> Thanks for the first hand report from Alaska. Which river were you fishing in case someone wants to look it up on Google Earth?
The Kanektok – but don’t tell anyone as the fishing is too good and I want to keep it to the groups I fish with. Actually, the various fish stocks do vary over time. Overfishing at sea is often blamed but it’s not always as clear as that and, in any event, as with the weather conditions, any trends seem to be reversed over time.
But Ian – your observations made on the ground over decades haven’t been published in a peer-reviewed journal. One-time observations by a climate activist (who hasn’t bothered to check historical literature) are what really counts.
Besides, what value is an observation if you can’t spin it into a doomsday scenario?
Kip, I’ve wondered if the expansion of greening of the planet is a significant heat sink. A 14% increase in forest cover, fattening of existing trees, “shrubification”, plankton uptake… Recent estimates of number of trees is 3 trillion
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34134366
14% of 3T= 420B trees, average age, say, 10yrs (30yrs greening), average carbon uptake is 48lbs/yr or ~0.2 metric t in 10yrs., sequestering 84million tonnes of carbon in the new trees only. Heat sink for that should be > that amount of anthracite coal…. Hey, it coincides with the pause, too!
And the climate obsessed want to end this planetary explosion of life, because they have been taught to hate.
Gary ==> Good question. In the end, it all equilibriates….
The gov’t around here loves the beaver. If the buggers build on your property or near it, the state goons either declare your property a wetlands and don’t allow you to do anything, or they blame you for modifying the landscape without a permit (apparently beaver don’t like waiting in line, paying fees etc, the little scofflaws), and attempt to fine you for their work.
JP Kalishek ==> What state or county? (sounds like fun)
Michigan via the DNR.
there was a letter a few years back that made the rounds on the introtubes about Dam beavers and the Dam fine the DNR wanted to asses some farmer or land owner over the illicit damming, and was supposed to be in the Lower Peninsula. It was also credited to another state, and I think someone changed it to somewhere in Canada too, but it did sound much like MI DNR methods.
as a f’rinstance with them:
Starting probably in the ’80s, maybe the ’70s, they imported wolves and lied about it for years. From years back the locals knew the wolves were there (you can hear the packs howl) and really didn’t care much, then the trouble wolves started killing livestock, but if they admit there are wolves, and they brought them in, they become responsible for the dead livestock and pets. Then the locals started to notice it was, for the ones the wolves were seen doing the killing, radio collared wolves. They then had a whistle blower call a radio show and say these were problem wolves brought from out of state from areas they had been killing livestock.
Radio collars, sans wolf, started turning up in rivers and roadside ditches. To fight that, they had to admit there were packs of wolves lurking about.
They did much the same about mountain lions. though they didn’t import those. they just denied they were here so they didn’t have to have anything to do with them, though now, with cell phone cameras, game cameras etc, they had to admit they were “back” in the area some years back.
Wisconsin’s DNR is almost as bad, with their “highlight” crossing the border into Illinois to a vets office and killing a fawn they treated after it was hit by a car because it might have come from WI and they were fightin a disease in the herds. instead of letting the vet test the animal they shot it in the pen and left. iirc the vet ran the tests anyhow, it wasn’t sick, and again this wasn’t even in Wisconsin.
Though recently I met a farmer who lost a calf to wolves, and the DRN agent took one look and said “Yep. That was a wolf.” and pointed out the tracks. The farmer knew it was because of how it was chewed on. Coyotes can’t break the femur like that, and don’t eat the hair and all.
There are rumors of the wolves being in town in Marinette, but the coyotes definitely are (they got a fawn where I work), so that’s unlikely, but possibly the ‘yotes came into town because the wolves are south of town (where said farmer’s place is) and they drive out coyotes.
“Hordes of Beavers”
Is that like Basil Fawlty’s –
“Hordes of wildebeest sweeping majestically across the plain”
What is wrong or silly with that? It is exactly what happens every year on Naabi plains in Serengeti. You can stand on Naabi hills and the vildebeest herds stretch literally to the horizon in all directions.
tty ==> You have to be British or love British Comedy TV humor (humour, really) to understand Fawlty Towers jokes. Maybe someone can link in a YouTube of the line…..
Lovely short film on putting back wolves into yellowstone park and the effects it had.
Beavers are pesky, destructive and change the landscape. Since tge changes tgey impose, damming up and flooding land which many urbanite climate fanatics like, they are on balance good…….
Polar bear food
Exactly.
Beavers have colonized the Arctic before.
In my neighborhood beavers seem to be considered a nuisance…
“There is significant beaver activity at the Sheep Paddocks site. Beaver trails were evident, including one leading under a pre-existing fence that was protecting existing and new plantings. This fence was repaired. Some beaver damage was sustained to a dozen cottonwoods which were soaking along the water’s edge over the weekend. These trees were still planted as they are expected to re-sprout.”
http://www.coquitlamriverwatershed.ca/sites/default/files/WWSS%20Coquitlam%20River%20Riparian%20Planting%20Report%202012.pdf
Beaver baffles had to be installed in my nearby Coquitlam River Park to suppress the beavers instincts to plug the trickling water drain. I understand that NASA invented the beaver baffle.
Here is some more information on the beaver baffler project…
http://a100.gov.bc.ca/appsdata/acat/documents/r40682/06.COQ.02_Habitat_Restoration_1388418058014_8414187995.pdf
Gary ==> Thanks for the link.
Nothing new. There were beavers up there during the previous interglacial as well:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/ancient-beavers-leave-traces-of-dam-in-yukon-1.549858
Beavers are very destructive in a developed area. Keep them out.
The North American beaver is very prolific. It has been accidentally released in many areas and they end up taking over. Large swaths of Siberia are impassible now because of introduced North American beaver.
Eurasian beavers are just as prolific. That said I don’t know why the Soviets introduced American Beavers (and several of other idiotic and destructive introductions, like muskrats and raccoon dogs, none of them accidental).
Bill ==> “…very destructive in a developed area.” Lions too, as are elephants, baboons, and lots of other wild animals….
We definitely don’t want beavers blocking our storm drains and culverts but that doesn’t make the destructive.
Kip-
You’ve written another wonderful, interesting and instructive piece. Thanks.
Beavers really are amazing creatures. They’re fun to watch but there are downsides (giardia and suburban dams).
This is definitely nitpicking but the program NATURE airs on PBS (not NPR)—
“…NPR’s NATURE program has a wonderful episode…”
John ==> Yeah……hard to watch a film on radio 🙂 (corrected).
Consider the North American Grand Canyon.
Now consider the surface watersheds that span post-glacial North America East and West of the Rockies including all of Canada. The single living species whose profound impact on the land is most visible from space is the beaver. Sorry, people!
A continent without the beaver (by now) would be a stark landscape of mass erosion, creeks and small rivers become deep gullies that scarcely allow any moisture to seep into the surrounding countryside. Combined runoff from these would be violent deluges as is seen in the Southwest. The Mississippi and Missouri would be deep canyons below grade.
A beaver deceiver, courtesy of New Hampshire Public Radio
(http://nhpr.org/post/conflict-over-coexisting-beavers)
http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/nhpr/files/styles/x_large/public/201704/beav_deceiv.jpg
Unfortunately, some beavers can and do overcome this and similar devices by simply building a ‘dam’ around them, up against that housing. That then blocks water from getting to the drainage pipe.
The best method that I know of is to simply put an ‘L’ shaped end on the end of a drainage pipe like that with the end pointed straight up to the level you want the water to stay at – and this has to be done somewhere on the dam where this pipe will be sticking well out into deeper water. Beavers are smart but they don’t seem to be able to figure that out.
A solution to SLR. Beaver dams to keep the water from reaching the sea.
Beavers truly are magnificent creatures. They influence the regional eco-system in ways that are not always readily observable.
This is an excellent thread and I appreciate the candid discussion of the benefits of beavers.
Unleash the vegan trapper generation…..into the wild. All it takes is some Facebook prodding and fake news plants.