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Much like humans, beavers can have an oversized effect on the landscape (SN: 8/4/18, p. 28). People who live near beaver habitat complain of downed trees and flooded land. But in areas populated mostly by critters, the effects can be positive. Beaver dams broaden and deepen small streams, forming new ponds and warming up local waters. Those beaver-built enhancements create or expand habitats hospitable to many other species — one of the main reasons that researchers refer to beavers as ecosystem engineers.
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A couple of decades ago, the dam-building rodents were hard to find in northwestern Alaska. "There's a lot of beaver around here now, a lot of lodges and dams," says Robert Kirk, a long-time resident of Noatak, Alaska — ground zero for much of the recent beaver expansion. His village of less than 600 people is the only human population center in the Noatak River watershed.
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Beavers' biggest effects on Arctic ecosystems may come from the added biodiversity within the ponds they create, says James Roth, an ecologist at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. These "oases on the tundra" will not only provide permanent habitat for fish and amphibians, they'll serve as seasonal stopover spots for migratory waterfowl. Physical changes to the environment could be just as dramatic, thawing permafrost decades faster than climate change alone would.
Beavers are a key species in modifying Arctic tundra in a warming climate.
(Score: 2) by Blymie on Wednesday November 28 2018, @11:40PM (3 children)
In Spring, male beavers are "feeling their oats", as they say.... and are much, MUCH more aggressive.
https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/we-were-worried-that-was-going-to-be-the-end-dog-attacked-by-beavers-in-fort-saskatchewan-1.3956911 [ctvnews.ca]
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/05/29/beavers_kill_man_trying_to_pose_for_photo.html [thestar.com]
Those teeth can be used for more than wood!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 28 2018, @11:47PM (1 child)
beavers... wood... there's a joke in there somewhere, dam it
(Score: 3, Funny) by bart9h on Thursday November 29 2018, @02:05AM
Like Wynona's Big Brown Beaver [youtube.com]?
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Thursday November 29 2018, @12:28AM
I would often go for walkabouts when I attended the University of Alaska Anchorage while smoking cigars around a nearby body of water that was swarming with these voracious rodents. Signs all over about keeping pets safe from aggressive beavers. Yearly the University had to pay to unblock the waterway due to beaver construction and plant new trees for them to cut down. I like those industrious animals always foiling the plans of that terrible University.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam