As rising temperatures caused by climate change push beavers farther north, they're creating ponds that are flooding millennia-old permafrost. When thawed, permafrost can release dangerous greenhouse gasses such as carbon and methane. | hereandnow
As temperatures warm and boreal beavers migrate north, they're creating ponds that are flooding millennia-old permafrost.
Beavers are chewing down shrubs as well as using moss, sedges and mud to build dams and form ponds in the tundra. These furry engineers swim back and forth all night to work on their dams, as people who have camped near beaver lodges or ponds know, Tape says. When beavers decide to build a pond in a place where humans don’t want them, he says it’s an “uphill battle” to work against them.
“[Beavers are] really creating these focal points or oases on the landscape for boreal species to gain a foothold in the Arctic,” Tape says. Climate change is melting ice and making shrubs grow taller in the tundra, but there’s also another factor at play: Beavers are still rebounding from overtrapping during the 19th and early 20th centuries that depleted the species’ population.
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