Deep in the wilderness, the largest beaver dam endures
e360.yale.edu
e360.yale.edu
They've been trying for years to get rid of them, since they are destroying the native forests. [0][1][2][3]
[0] https://es.mongabay.com/2023/06/castor-invasor-plaga-que-arr...
[1] https://www.infobae.com/tendencias/2023/06/06/castores-invas...
[2] https://www.telam.com.ar/notas/202011/536780-castores-tierra...
[3] https://www.scidev.net/america-latina/news/con-trampas-errad...
Beavers can make lakes that are absolutely enormous because they aim their dams so carefully, and can construct them to very impressive heights. I've had a 20 meter wide two meter high beaver dam on my Canadian property. It seemed incredible that such tiny animals can make such enormous constructs.
Humans have done a lot by this measure. Some of it is less than desirable though.
We managed to convince the little bastards to move down the creek to a section where the flooding would hit some woods and CRP ground that we could never really farm due to terrain.
But that took like 10 years. Shooting them and destroying the dam would've taken a day.
So that's the motivation.
First, if you have a pond beavers will come over at night and dig holes the width of a basketball about a meter from the edge of the pond into the water (vertically down, then sideways). They camouflage these holes or they simply overgrow, good luck to an unsuspecting human that had his/her leg fall into such a deep hole.
Then, they dig such holes and passages into earthworks designed as flood defenses. Huge amount of money goes into fixing such earthworks.
Finally, if you(or anyone nearby) happen to have drainage channels or small rivers, these will be blocked by beavers to the point of flooding the surrounding area. Various compensation schemes exist, but not everyone has documentation to use them.
Fibally,a braver can be a very dangerous animal when startled/provoked/cornered. Around here every person is told in their youth, "don't approach beavers" or if they bite you in the leg (usually groin area) you'll bled out in 20s.
No, beavers are not nice... If course they shouldn't be eradicated, but they should be managed properly, not enjoy 100% protection as they do here in Poland, for example.
Don't approach wild animals if you don't want them to bite you? This is just common sense.
Overall, the issues you discuss pale in comparison to the benefits they provide. Humans have built developments where naturally there would be beavers if they hadn't been wiped out. The lesson isn't that we need to fight nature harder to preserve our victories against it. The lesson is that we need to be more thoughtful so our developments aren't incompatible with beneficial natural processes.
I know how annoying it can be to have wild animals destroy your property (there are for instance beavers, racoons, wild boars and woodpeckers where I live, and I own a wooden house), but in principle we do not have more right to shaping our habitat the way we like than beavers and wildlife in general. More than "managing beavers", what we need is to find ways to co-exist peacefully. One part might be "managing" them, but another part is definitely to accept that their needs in part conflict with ours, and that we need to give them some space and accept some of the damage as a price to pay to share land with them.
I don't know where you live, but, around here, humans want growth and profit. Due to this, they are not able to build a dam, but complain about floods. /s
https://www.google.com/maps/place/San+Luis+Peak/@38.0126226,...
https://www.pc.gc.ca/pn-np/nt/woodbuffalo/nature/beaver_gall...
There are more photos in an Atlas Obscura article [1] discussed here a few years back [2].
[1]: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/worlds-largest-beaver-da...
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27000775
One comment in that thread [3] also links to the satellite photos on Google Maps [4].
The article kind of glosses over how inaccessible this place is. Rob Mark got extraordinarily lucky that the water level got high enough to boat to the area because unlike the jungle, the water is way too cold to survive for very long even during the summer and there's no solid ground for miles at a time like in a tropical jungle. It's all bog and peatland as far as the eye can see.
Unless the government clears helicopters to rappel people down, he might be the last person to visit the area given climate change.
What a load of bunk, don't make excuses because of weakness to leave the house and live life.
Every year things get easier and people are better off.
> The boatman replied that he had no GPS
This is now called a "phone", in the amazing future of 9 years later.
Now you can buy a cheap sat phone and call the boatman (Also having the standard iPhone Emergency SOS via satellite). Next year many cellphones should start having satellite voice access.
You also have a working trip planned out and have access to multiple satellite maps - https://geohack.toolforge.org/geohack.php?params=58_16_17_N_...
> Rob Mark got extraordinarily lucky
He planned the trek for seven years and made multiple attempts. He didn't pretend life was getting worse and it was better not to try.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niche_construction niche construction feedback loops have unpredictable consequences. It's not always positive or predictable.
> It’s hard to remember, but in the early ‘70s some scientists thought the Earth might be cooling. Thie’s research had showed evidence of the opposite; the paper about permafrost melting that he published in 1974 is now considered one of the pioneering studies of climate change.
This is all lies. In the paper [1] Thie states clearly that the world was cooling, and that the changes in the permafrost were connected to entirely natural cycles. That's all stuff that has been fully memory-holed today in a world where scientists insist that temperatures are fully stable if not for fossil fuel burning. Here are some quotes from it:
> "Especially with the trend of cooling of the past 20 years, new permafrost might develop again in some area"
> "If the present trend of cooling of the climate does not continue, the slow northerly movement will continue"
The Yale article makes it sound like the paper disagreed with global cooling, but it states it as a pure matter of fact.
> "it was estimated that extensive melting started between 100 and 200 years ago, and has progressed most rapidly over about 120 years ago till the present"
1850 is considered by climatologists to be pre-industrial as there were hardly any CO2 emissions at this time.
There is also an extensive discussion of at the time well known long term temperature cycles:
> "The first alternative seems somewhat unlikely, as during the warm period of about 1000 years which followed it, permafrost would have collapsed and most collapse scars would most probably have become overgrown. The second alternative is therefore a distinct possibility: most of the permafrost in the study area is probably not much older than about 600 years and not younger than about 150 years. The southern limit of collapse scars as mapped by Zoltai (Zoltai and Tarnocai 1969) must have had permafrost dating from between 600 B.P. and 120 B.P. Possibly this limit was reached during the “Little Ice Age” which started around 550 B.P. and ended about 1850 (Lamb 1963) - most likely between about 400 B.P. and 200 B.P"
The Little Ice Age! A term that you hear only from supposed climate change deniers these days. But also:
> "It is inadequate to suggest that a single meteorological parameter, such as temperature, controls permafrost development and collapse."
Fossil fuels, CO2 and man-made climate change isn't discussed in this paper at all. Yet Yale tells us it was a consensus busting pioneer that showed the world that global warming was real.
It is all deeply unfortunate. The frequency with which we are told lies about the history of climatology is one of the strongest arguments for being skeptical about all claims by academics, not only about their present day findings, but also about the past.
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274463511_Distribut...