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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 28 2018, @11:48PM (7 children)
These beavers must be stopped before we all spontaneously cumbust due to the heat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 29 2018, @12:21AM (5 children)
If Beavers are tasty, the problem will solve itself.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 29 2018, @12:23AM (4 children)
Beaver anal glands taste like raspberry. When you see 'natural flavor' on something that tastes like raspberry thats what it means.
(Score: 5, Informative) by schad on Thursday November 29 2018, @01:27AM (3 children)
Wow. Apparently this is true. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 29 2018, @03:15PM (1 child)
Thank you for the link, I was passing this off as non-sense at first.
You changed that for me. Now I may have to re-evaluate my taste for vanilla, raspberry and strawberry flavors...
My favorite part of that article:
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Thursday November 29 2018, @08:30PM
Truth is stranger than fiction.
Well, that is somewhat reassuring news. It is unlikely that I have eaten a beaver gland.
Wait that came wrong...
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday November 29 2018, @08:47PM
Yuck! I feel physically sick. I've always thought it's outrageous food manufacturers are allowed to just print "natural flavoring" and that qualifies as an ingredient on the label. It's obvious pandering to the flavoring companies at the expense of consumer information and dietary choice. As this example illustrates, it's also one of the biggest stumbling blocks in selecting food products when following a vegetarian or vegan diet when they don't bother to mark it as such. You wind up sticking with simple, additive-free ingredients, although that's not so bad.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday November 29 2018, @06:30PM
Self-cooking animals sound like a great opportunity for people to finally leave their parent's basements.