Global beaver citizens that we are, I woke up with an email from the Edinbugh professor and regular reader of this website J. Suilin Lavelle, who said she just ran into Roisin Campbell at the mammal conference on the weekend! Roisin told her she had a lot of fun on her visit to Vermont meeting Patti and Skip. (Which I wrote about a few days ago because, honestly that’s how small the beaver world is.) The beaver champions of that nation are currently in a Brexit-induced panic because the Scottish government had dragged their beaver decision out for so long, and now the insanity over the EU vote might delay or derail everything.
You probably didn’t realize that Brexit was bad news for beavers too, did you?
Meanwhile, there’s a nice bit of news from the Mendenhall Glacier beaver cam this year, which I was recently alerted to by a US Forestry friend here in Vallejo.
Thousands Around the World Tune In to Snoop on a Beaver Den
Watching the beavers sleep has kept thousands of viewers occupied since June 28, when the US Forest Service installed an infrared camera in the den to record in real time the beavers’ activities. As nocturnal creatures, that means sleeping most of the day and getting up periodically to stretch, eat, or relieve themselves. Recommended viewing is between 7 AM and 7 PM Alaska Standard Time.
Natural resource specialist Peter Schneider and fisheries biologist Don Martin initially set up a beaver camera in 2004 to satiate their curiosities about a collection of food outside the beaver lodge on Steep Creek. To monitor the beavers’ activities, they set up a camera outside the lodge and even had it insulated throughout the winter.
Are you keeping track of the mileage with your atlas at home here? The beaver story has gone from Scotland to Vermont to Juneau to Vallejo to Martinez so far. Some 2500+miles and counting. Not bad for a morning’s work!
And just so we don’t feel too smugly accomplished, here’s a glimpse of how far we have yet to go courtesy of the silliest research ever published.
As more beaver colonies form, the rodents have an adverse effect on the climate by changing levels of methane gas. This happens because beaver colonies are formed in ponds constructed by the beaver dams. These tend to be pockets of shallow water (no more than 1.5 meters high.) Within this oxygen-poor standing water, methane gas levels build up and the gas, because it cannot dissolve in the water, is eventually released into the atmosphere.
According to Professor Colin J. Whitfield (University of Saskatchewan in Canada), compared with 100 years ago, 200 times more of greenhouse gas is released into the atmosphere from beaver colonies. This has come from a study into beaver colonies in Eurasia (the Castor fiber species) and North America (the Castor Canadensis species.)
The model suggests beavers currently contribute 0.80 teragrams (or 800 million kilograms) of methane into the atmosphere. Interviewed by International Business Times, Professor Whitfield suggest this problem not going away anytime soon unless action is taken: “Continued range expansion, coupled with changes in population and pond densities, may dramatically increase the amount of water impounded by the beaver…[this] suggests that the contribution of beaver activity to global methane emissions may continue to grow.
Truly the reporter selected the IDEAL photo to accompany this groundbreaking research, it really communicates the level of intelligence of those involved. (Nutria) See Dr. Whitfield is from the university of Saskatchewan which is famous for the kill contest they held this year. He teamed up with Dr. Cherie Westbrook of Alberta who was probably just happy to publish something without the name Glynnis Hood on it, and I’ve been told that she regrets how this study has been misused. But I spare her no mercy and want this supposedly seminal research to be the beaver albatross around her educated neck. She should have known that folks would be only too happy for another bogus reason to blame beavers.
Let me explain this again for those who are mislead, yes beaver dams release methane, which is one of the green house gasses we are not really worried about. It dissolves in 2-3 years, unlike carbon, which we are VERY worried about, which lasts for decades. (When you drive to work your car doesn’t release methane.) Along the way beavers increase the water supply which we are going to need as carbon numbers keep rising. Beavers also aid biodiversity, which we need in on a planet that is rapidly losing species. (I of course tried to write the editor yesterday about the photo, but it appears they are obviously not overly concerned with accuracy.)
Oh and did you know that we successfully entered Jupiter’s orbit after the fireworks on independence day? We’re on a 20 month rotation studying a planet at 540,000,000 miles away. And the five year mission predictions were accurate to within 1 second.
Welcome to Jupiter!
