I see armadillos here now. 40 years ago I never saw one north of Oklahoma City. I am no scientist but not completely uneducated. I can read. I have seen the fossils. Seems more than likely that ice ages were real as well as a time when much of Ks was an inland sea. It seems to me that warming and cooling are natural events. I am not convinced we humans are causing this warming trend over the last 30 years or so. I am not convinced its going to continue either

Send up some MN, WI and NY beaver trappers to take care of the problem.

This will stop if we eat bugs.

Pictures from the 1980s near the fur boom and Pictures from now when there's not a boom. Seems about right.

Speaking of satellites, look at the scale bar in the Maxar pan imagery, in meters so not showing large areas at a time. Maxar is a "private" civilian satellite that deals in spatial resolutions in the 1- 4 meter range. Most civilian government satellites are moderate to courser spatial scale (Landsat is 30 x 30 m pixels multi-spectral, 15 m pan and is considered moderate resolution). Most of those beav dams would show as maybe 5 or so Landsat pixels. Anyone interested in doing the math of converting hectares to acres, it tales 2.47 acres to equal 1 hectare.

To compare the increase in beavers and their dams to most boreal forest wildfires in Alaska would be a stretch, fire is the largest changer of Alaskan land cover. The USGS/ Forest Service has mapped about 10% of the state experiencing some sort of wildfire since 1984 using Landsat imagery (the fire needs to be 1,000 acres or more to be mapped). That percentage would be if each fire was unique in a new place, I don't know without working the dataset how many of those burn areas have burned more than once.

There is good evidence that Alaskan permafrost is melting, especially along the periphery of where it occurs and that shrubs are moving into the tundra, again happening at the ecotone interface of things. Now, what is causing those changes, well, the Earth is always changing, and our ability to look at any one area with the same consistent measurements is fairly limited over time. Remember, the Vikings were do some agriculture on the southern edges of Greenland in 1050 or so and then things changed again.

What would be cool if some of the Alaskan native corporations up there came up with a neat name and made some of this growing beaver population into fancy gourmet food for either people or pets. Use the resource and make coin from it, the beavers will probably make more of themselves in the meantime...

Interestingly, there were never groundhogs here until the past 5 years or so. I don't think global warming cause them to move SOUTH?

It’s been 16 years since polar bears were placed on the endangered list

Global warming/melting ice the cause,,,,,,,,,

16 years later,,,,,,polar bear population exploding!!!!

Does AK still have a limit on beaver? AK had very strict rules on beaver removal, as far as nuisance work goes. You had to apply for a permit for every job if out of season. I would bet some of the areas they are talking about do not average two people there a year to 50 sq miles.

X2, well put Mark!

Typical jerk that don’t know nothing about beaver either, that wrote that. If he thinks there are 11,000 beavs in the short stretch of stream, he prolly thinks aliens from some other galaxy put them there too! lol

I remember reading about a trapper in FFG many years ago, that was trapping beaver in the tundra. He would go out in the morning, with his equipment, take a snow shovel and dig a large amount of snow off the ice. Then spud through like four feet of ice, guessing where to set the trap. The way the story went, he spent most of the day, digging snow and chipping ice to get one trap set. I thought to myself, there is one dedicated trapper, if he lucked out and found a run after all that, he might catch a beaver.

That might be WHY those beaver aren’t being pursued, at todays prices! lol

I find the comparison to wildfires, well, rather a poor one if they are trying to make the beavers sound bad.
I don't know about Alaska but I do know that the majority of the continental US used to be burned a regular basis.
Fires are a good thing.
The US was vastly different 250 years ago, fire was very common, lots info from some of the first Europeans that settle this land.
They mention the annual fires on the land, fires burning for days and being able to see them from many miles away at night.



I'm old enough to remember what it was like around here 50 years ago when I was in my teens.
No turkeys, sandhill cranes, wolves and lots more land that was relatively wild.
Over the years farms have become unhospital places for wildlife, fence lines full of rabbits and pheasants are gone.
The river that ran thru the town I lived in was nothing but a carp and northern pike fishery.
3 dams in the town, now there is 2 dams, the biggest one was removed, now there are panfish, smallmouth bass and walleye.
The water quality has improved. I'd like to see the last 2 dams that are used for nothing removed.

so like all changes, good and bad.

Bingo! Beaver have not been worth trapping for the fur market in Alaska for over 30 years. Went from seasonal limits with shorter seasons, to no limits, longer seasons, and shoot em. Still little interest in trapping or shooting beaver for less than a buck an inch.


I guess nobody researched" The Death of Trapping in Rural Alaska". Actually, I believe ADFG did.

BTW where that Satellite picture is taken there is currently no limit and no closed season on beaver.

Beaver …as many as stars in the sky……..

$200 bounty on a beaver and they wouldn’t last long.

Beavers in the wilderness are not pests. I know, it is hard grasp when they are thought of as the enemy in civilization.

Lots of hand wringing and angst prior to the dam removal along the Baraboo River. Once the silt settled the fishing in that stretch became phenomenal, especially for smallies. If you've got the time this is a good read:

https://sandcountyfoundation.org/uploads/Running-Free-The-Baraboo-River-Restoration-Story-FINAL.pdf

When I lived there my trapline started at the edge of town downstream to the freeway, then off and on to the confluence with the Wisconsin River. A chainsaw was required annually to cut through jams, but there were critters galore.

Climate change chicken-littles are in denial that this earth is a dynamic place; things have been changing since the beginning of time. Environments that do not change become stagnant, both on a micro as well ad macro level.

People just naturally dislike change.

Now there are folks who want to control people, who are using this issue to further their Marxist agenda.

I don't see the scientific connection that climate change has caused this. I don't get it. This is beaver change. It could have easily been trapped in the 70's and not in the 2010's.

Still interesting though. I imagine thats what the US lower looked like at some point not too long ago.

Interesting, because in Oregon beaver are now being called a "keystone" species that needs to be protected and population augmented whenever and wherever possible. "Then, we will have bountiful coho runs again and climate change reversed."

They are chipping away at it. Beaver trapping has been banned on private forest land by agreement with the major stake holders in a back room deal where logging would be allowed without lawsuits if the companies made certain sacrifices. Our beaver trapping being one of those.

And fur trapping beaver I have to document where every beaver was caught and turn in that information to our ODFW at the end of the season. You say it....I can't.

Armadillos have invaded places in MO, I never heard of one where I go north of the Ozark's 40 years ago now they are common.