Have you see that new movie on netflix where beavers destroy the earth by hitting it with a comet? You missed it? Trust me it’s coming soon. Apparently the ever-loving world cannot get enough of the beavers causing climate change meme. NPR had to get in on the fun. Of course since they’re very ivy league and intellectual they brought in a top beaver scientist who knew all about how salmon couldn’t get over dams and stuff.
FROM ENGLAND.
Beavers have been moving into the Arctic, accelerating the effects of climate change
NPR’s Sacha Pfeiffer speaks with Helen Wheeler, a wildlife ecologist from Anglia Ruskin University in the U.K., on the impacts beavers are having as they move into the Arctic tundra.
For years now, scientists have been documenting the somewhat mysterious spread of a new species into the Arctic, beavers. They’re sometimes called nature’s engineers for the way they change the shape of streams and rivers and ponds. Those changes can accelerate the effects of climate change, since the warmth of the ponds the beavers create with their dams can thaw the frozen ground below. They may also be affecting the environment in other ways. Helen Wheeler is a wildlife ecologist at Anglia Ruskin University in the U.K. She’s researching the impact of beavers on indigenous communities and local ecosystems in Canada. She joins us from Cambridge, England. Hi and welcome.
Yes they’re “:SOMETIMES CALLED NATURE’S ENGINEERS” and sometimes called “Nature’s Destroyers” depending on whose doing the calling. I am so glad our public dollars are supporting hard-hitting interviews like this. This was certainly worth the three tote bags,
PFEIFFER: Do you know why this is happening?
WHEELER: There’s two kind of major drivers that we think could be occurring. So it may be that beavers a long time ago were much more abundant in the Arctic and then during the fur trade declined. And then as the fur trade came to an end towards the end of the 19th century, we started to see them increase again. And then more recently, there’s been a shift to maybe younger generations trapping beavers less. And so we might see them recovering even more. The other option is that beavers are actually expanding northwards more than they have in the past due to climate change. It could be that, for example, with shrubs moving further northwards under climate change, beavers are able to use those shrubs to build their dams and lodges. Or it could be that we’ve got longer periods without snow, which means there’s longer for beavers to forage in the summer.
Notice there is zero mention of beavers EATING said shrubs. Because all NPR beavers do with the shrubs is actually make dams to thaw permafrost. Obviously beavers eat air. Like Chameleons were thought to do in Shakespeare’s day.
“Excellent, i’ faith, of the chameleon’s dish. I eat the air, promise-crammed. You cannot feed capons so.”
Hamlet, act 3, scene 2
All that air and those empty promises must have made beavers greedy and fat, because they just can’t wait to build those dams and ruin things for all of us and those fish.
WHEELER: One thing people are looking to is that culture around trapping and whether that can be a solution. I think there’s thoughts about removing beaver dams to allow the fish populations to return and things like that. And so I think that’s the questions people are really asking now – is how to deal with this problem
AGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH THE STUPID, IT BURNS US. Nasty hobbitses cut us with their stupid lies about beavers blocking salmon. We can’t endure it. We cannot stand how long it’s going to take to find the address for my letter of complaint and how much this makes me want to stand up and scream out the window like some kind of deranged ecologically-minded Howard Beale after reading Ben Goldfarb’s book.
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Dear Sacha Pfeiffer,
I was surprised by your recent interview with Dr. Wheeler discussing the increasing presence of beaver in the artic. Obviously since beavers are herbivores they could only move north as fast as the warming climate made shrubs to sustain them. I was surprised Dr. Wheeler didn’t mention this. I was also surprised she seemed so unaware of the body of scientific literature on beaver dams and salmonids. For the past 20 years NOAA fisheries have been researching and reporting that beaver dams are in fact crucial to salmonids and provide deep, unfrozen pools where juveniles can grow and fatten. Of course England doesn’t actually have salmon, or until very recently beaver, so how would she know?
Obviously as the planet warms many species are extending their range looking for suitable forage or habitat. The newly beaver-created ponds will help sustain an ecosystem that we have forced to become nomadic with our failure to stop burning fossil fuels. What remains stunning to me is how eager NPR and others are to blame beavers for extending the effects of a warming climate. I’m assuming that there will be similar reports blaming glaciers when the oceans rise?
Heidi Perryman, Ph.D.
Worth A Dam
California Beaver Summit
