With warming and a changing climate, beaver have now moved into the Arctic as high as the ocean shoreline.

With warming and a changing climate, beavers have now moved into the Arctic right up to the ocean shoreline.
Photo Credit: CBC

Climate change: beavers on the move north

Scientists have been noticing this for a few years now, as have residents in Canada’s far north and Arctic: global warming is changing things.

A variety of plants , animals , and marine creatures have been moving north into Arctic areas where they’ve not been seen before

The latest to follow the trend are beavers.

Hunters had found beavers in the northern reaches of the Yukon in 2008 and 2009, but now they’ve apparently reached the Beaufort Sea.

Beavers are considered ecosystem engineers — a keystone species. That means they alter the habitat for themselves and other animals.
Beavers are considered ecosystem engineers — a keystone species. That means they alter the habitat for themselves and other animals, to the benefit of some and the detriment of others © Amanda licensed CC BY 2.0

A Canadian research team on accidently discovered the beavers on the Arctic coastline while doing research on raptors.

Their discovery was published in the Canadian Field Naturalist in June 2016 (abstract HERE)

This month a hunter in the Northwest Territories spotted something strange moving on the tundra. He quickly bagged his first ever beaver.

A beaver dam is seen on the Babbage River near the Beaufort Sea coast in Yukon Territory
A beaver dam is seen on the Babbage River near the Beaufort Sea coast in Yukon Territory © Jay Frandsen / Parks Canada

But while it may be a surprise benefit for the hunter, for local Inuivialuit fishermen, the beaver are starting to be problematic. Even where they have been beaver, they are not becoming more numerous.

The locals complain the beavers are damming local fish bearing rivers in the high Arctic and causing some lakes to dry up.

*We saw something walk toward us and it was a beaver. So I drove up to it and I shot it,* said Richard Gruben, Inuvialuit hunter.
*We saw something walk toward us and it was a beaver. So I drove up to it and I shot it,* said Richard Gruben, Inuvialuit hunter. © Submitted by Richard Gruben via CBC

Another concern, is that beaver might contaminate water where drinking supplies are drawn with an intestinal disease known as giardia

A recent study in the journal Science Advances points to the correlation of the loss of sea ice with the greening of the Arctic.

The paper is called “Arctic greening from warming promotes declines in caribou populations”  (abstract HERE)

Ecosystems really are changing- Tom Jung

The warming Arctic region is bringing shrubs and trees such as birch to the far north and with them and the shorter winters come the beaver. That paper however also points out these “new” plants although increasing the region’s biomass which in theory might be good for caribou, in fact many have strong “anti-browsing” defences meaning there’s more greenery but less for the caribou to eat, contributing to the decline of the migratory caribou population.

Tom Jung, senior wildlife biologist at the Yukon Department of Environment was one of the scientists who first noticed the beavers on the Beaufort Sea coast.

Quoted in the CBC he said. “It’s really just a harbinger of showing that the ecosystems really are changing in response to climate change”.

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