Photos from space show 11,000 beavers are wreaking

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/t...gG?cvid=f95ff9ea4c5343f8a780ea23ec4269b5

Interesting stuff.

So crazy! A friend sent me a similar article yesterday. Maybe 1-2 beavers get trapped here in my village. A whole lot more get shot going into fishnets but I can’t imagine it even puts a dent in their numbers. I’ve even witnessed a lot of beavers up into the Brooks Range that I’ve never seen before.

There will be a lot of interesting thoughts about this. Thanks for the share, Silky.

I don't trust the science of any researcher that subscribes to manmade global warming.
This article is awash in bias as is most of the science it comments on.

And who is now opposed to beaver engineered wetland habitat any way?
I bet a Benjamin these "brights" stay up late dreaming up ways to spay and neuter beavs.

Blessins,
Mark

I’d like to see a photo from 1880 or even better 1780. lol

Prehistoric beaver caused climate change, remember the Sahara Forest?

Now beaver are contributing to global warming, boy do I feel dumb I was convinced it was cow farts!!

Sounds like a good nuisance job for someone younger than I am.

Garry-

That’s what they’ve done in 40 years……lazy! Looks like one of the areas I trap, dam, pond creek…dam, pond, creek over and over. Beavers doing what beavers do.
I’d like to see a pic from 1987, probably looks the same as today.

What's wrong with you Alaskan T-maner's letting the beaver take over your state like that? LOL

Yes

You would think environmentalists would be tickled pink about this. But...........wreaking havoc?

Need to show creek valleys where they have mining operations.. See what the creeks look like where Parker and Tony's are set up.

Mac

Today, the climate change cultists correlate everything to climate change. I do know beaver change the environment that they live in, and usually in a negative way, in terms of water quality, shade integrity, water temps, etc..

That is funny! Five or six years ago now I was on a Trapping Advisory Board for the state of Montana. I had to travel around the state and hold meetings in the different regions. In Western Montana every liberal transplant would talk about saving the beaver because they would dam streams and store water to combat climate change. Guess they were wrong.
Just the same old thing, folks twisting things around to support their agenda.

Correct

Up is down, in is out, good is bad, wrong is right...........and now, fire is water...

Beavers transforming the landscape like wildfire. Satellite images show lush ponds as beavers build their dams.

These lefties people are crazy and so is anybody that listens to them

No difference in the folks that want coyotes to keep the deer population in check.

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.

Wait,

I thought Egyptian loggers & foresters caused the
clear cutting of the Sahara forest !!!

walleyed

X2.
Of course the fire comparison is the climate propagandists using language to 'fan the flames' and 'turn up the heat' to further their narrative for the snowflake constituency.

Looks like fun to me. Anybody have P.O.C info where I can send my bid? Winter only, bugs would be way to bad in the summer.

Carl, thats why I don’t like progressive’s, libs, demorats, or whatever you wish to call them. They feel like they have to control every aspect of your life, or we will all die of _________________(fill in the blank). You can start with climate change. They always think (know) they are the smartest people in the room, gathering, or anyplace else they are!

The "scientific connection" isn't that the beaver are causing climate change, but that climate change is now allowing willow brush to grow farther north. It's not just beaver that are moving north, but moose are moving northward also.

Northward advancement of moose in Alaska has been documented since the 1950's.

I have trapped beaver under two feet of ice. Chop a hole in front of the lodge. Poke around with a pole, find a run, chop another hole, put in a 330, catch one or two. Then I heard about under ice snaring. Chop one hole between the lodge and feed pile. Put snares on a fresh piece of willow and stick it in. They come to you in late winter. feed pile looks immense sticking through the ice. Cut a hole lay down on your belly. Lean down in the hole and look around. Its not that immense come late winter. Still takes awhile but more efficient. Get plenty of marten and cat bait. Fresh shot prairie dogs work just as good BTW. Cutting ice with a chain saw works but its hard on the chain and bar. You get pretty wet too.

Obviously most of you have never been on the ground on the Seward Peninsula. Some of the streams pictured are a 100 miles from the nearest town or village. Two tough days on an atv to get out there. Five or six hours on a snow machine. Four hours of daylight in the winter. Gas is $6.00 a gallon. Or more. Better brush up on your survival skills.

It starts with the snow shoveling to possibly see if the lodge is even active if you can wallow through the snow. There is a feed pile somewhere under that snow. Hopefully you can figure out which side of the lodge the creek or pond is, at least here.

PS Don't forget your shovel for when it a blows in again.

Meanwhile, in the southern hemisphere:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_eradication_in_Tierra_del_Fuego

Dang. The earth is changing. There’s a first time for everything. : )

"There's not even a lot of other animals that leave a footprint you can see from space," Ken Tape, an ecologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, told Insider. "There is one, and they're called humans."

I guess he has never seen this place from space. Dead spruce are laying everywhere from an animal called bark beetles. I had trails, now I have log jams of dead branchy spruce.

Would you settle for a scrawling on a stone tablet? PHOTO from 1780. Priceless!

That's why I said in the beginning, I knew a lot of interesting thoughts would be inspired about this.

When "climate change" is mentioned, even time after time, it raises my hackles in warning of the sources claiming it. It's a red flag for me , anymore.

Waggler had a good perspective, as do others.

Animals don't conspire to change anything. They just do what they do.

Imagine living the dream and going after the beaver trifecta in a single year: Arctic Circle, Tierra del Fuego, and Eurasian Beavers.



THAT would be the season of a lifetime.

The Beaver trifecta,lol.

JMHO The earth is going to do as it pleases.
If the earth wants to make Alaska the new Flordia , it will no amount of taxes is going to stop it!
Electric cars and trucks , eletric anything and everything isn't doing anything to change that !There's proof that at least once in the past , the north and south poles switched .
So if the earth can do that , there's not a thing man can do to stop it!
Look how far the north pole has moved since 1904 .

https://gisgeography.com/magnetic-north-vs-geographic-true-pole/

Once you realize how big Alaska is, it makes a lot more sense. Alaska is absolutely massive and glen Allen is so goofy remote . No one really cares about the Beavers. Other than few random people on trapperman. Yes, I have been to Glen Allen.

The religion of global climatology is rapidly growing and the faithful are joining in droves around this world. Summits here. More summits there. Everywhere the climate religious gather to worship their god, which is themselves.

Me and mine will stay firmly planted in the faith that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.

And God is still in charge of all of it. Not any of us who are His creation.
Donna and I will again today, as we do each day we trap, thank the Lord for His creation which we get to trap in.

Blessings!
Mark

The whole "it can be seen from space" isn't really the big deal it used to be anyways. Pretty much anything can be seen from space with Google Earth now. I can zoom in on my house and see my dog in the yard. If you look at my place in April you'll see a lush green pasture. Look again in August and you'll see a what looks like a barren landscape after the horses graze it off.

Most of the high-res (so you can see those details) are from aerial photography and not satellites, at least in the conterminous U.S., because programs such as USDA's NAIP photography is flown every year (or almost every year). Just a technical quibble, if its satellite or aerial based, it all fits under the term and study of "remote sensing".

So in Oregon the beaver are saving the planet, but in Alaska they are destroying it. This should tell you all you need to know about the climate change mob.

It's not just beaver, and it's nothing new.

I didn't know they had permafrost in Oregon? Or Oregon had a region in the Arctic? What's Oregon have to do with the Arctic?

OH yeah, Glennallen? What the?

I have one question and before I ask I know it's silly but how did they come up with the number of 11,000 beavers? What government agency does the counting ?lol

I agree, hard to tell if those ponds have active houses from space.

That was my thought too but then I was directed to the study report that made no reference to beaver numbers, only pond numbers. Dunno how to post a link but it is on nature.com and dated may 3 2022

Somebody somewhere probably got a bunch of money to sit at a desk and look at satellite images . To the opposite effect I notice sloughs filling in with vegetation and reducing b’ver habitat. So there you have it. Change.

Your tax money and mine.

Dirt mentioned seeing "bug kill" from space. His experience is in Alaska, here's an example from northern Colorado captured by Landsat satellites that orbit the Earth 400+ miles up. The colors you see are not "natural" color but 2 different infrared bands over the visible red band.

The first image is from 2004 when the forest on the hills and lower mountains was healthy before a major outbreak of mountain pine bettle.



This second image is from 2013, although the bugs started doing their work earlier, I think around 2010. I'm not sure how many of the trees in individual Landsat pixels (30 x 30 meters in these bands) have to be dead to make the pixel go to these rusty bed/brown color but probably substantial proportion (how many pondersoa pine- if that's what is there-- can you fit in a space of 30 x 30 meters?)



The last image is from 2016 soon after the "Beaver Creek" wildfire. You can see that many of the earlier bug killed patches of forest have burned. I should find a newer image but what we were working using this example sort of ended for our purposes in 2017. Maybe I'll find one from last year this coming week to show the aftermath of everything now 6 years later...

Scale context, the "larger" lake seen is about a mile long north to south so the entire area is about 7 miles east-west and 8 miles north-south.

Don't tell Mr. Tape that more than just beavers and humans change the environment that can be seen from space. He seems to be out of the space loop.

Dirt, he sounds more like a fruit loop than a space loop! Yeah, follow the science!

Nah, he's just trying to get some more out-of-academia recognition. From his publication record, he probably got his PhD around 2005/2006. Want's to be more buzz worthy. maybe angling for Department Chair or a Dean position.

https://sites.google.com/a/alaska.edu/kentape/

The beavers are lined up, take me Bill Tyler, take me.