#European beaver

[acesrockz]

ALPACA-TOBER!

DAY 15!

A passionate duet!

[bwabbitv3s]

Beavers bring wetlands back to the UK | WILD HOPE

The surprise return of beavers to the British countryside brings benefits and controversy for humans and wildlife alike. The work of these famously busy rodents increases local biodiversity, reduces storm-induced flooding, and restores wilderness to a highly manicured landscape. It also injects some chaos into the lives of the beavers’ human neighbors. Can the British beavers regain their former glory as powerful ecosystem engineers, or is their new home too domesticated to return to the wild?

[learnwithmearticles]

Loss and Reintroduction of Beavers

Some explanation of the importance of beavers and how reintroduction is going in Eurasia.

Beavers

In North America, beavers are a keystone species. They influence the movement of rivers, and thus, impact many other species in biological communities. They provide food to species they are prey of, and change the landscape with their own eating habits.

The dams they create increase sizes of ponds and can become wetlands - increasing the habitat space for other species. This also increases biodiversity by allowing plants that thrive in flooded areas to emerge while reducing flood risks by holding back large build-ups of water1. Additionally, dams are important filters for downstream water. Water run-off from urban and agricultural areas often carry harmful amounts of sediment, nitrogen, and phosphorus, which are primary sources of algal blooms - an occurrence that often results in a lot of fish dying. Beaver dams help filter these excess nutrients from going downstream, making it cleaner2.

The functions of dams could be done by human intervention and innovation, and in many places are, but beavers are completely content to create and maintain dams, why not let them? They are useful aside from dams, anyway, as they also serve the important role as a herbivore and a prey animal for other species.

Gone from Eurasia

For centuries, beavers have been highly important to humans, as well. The Eurasian beaver, also called the European beaver, was hunted extensively for its fur, meat, and castoreum, which is used in fragrances and food. They became extinct in England, Wales, and Scotland by the 1500s3. By 1900, the population was about 1,200 individuals in Europe.

These losses resulted in biodiversity and habitat quality loss for Eurasian countries. Multiple studies have reported on lower plant diversity, increases in dominant plant species foliage cover, lower invertebrate diversity, and many other impacts as a result of the absence of beavers4. Many studies, however, specifically reflect on the impact of beaver loss in the context of reintroduction.

Reintroduction

The Eurasian beaver now has an estimated population of 1.2 million5. The IUCN Red List last assessed it in 2016 and it is in the “Least Concern” category6. 

Eurasian beaver reintroduction has taken place in many countries to varying degrees, including France, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland7. Many countries, like France and Poland, faced issues relating to a lack of coordination with other official parties and establishing procedures to ensure the success of the reintroduced animals7. In other places such as Latvia and the Netherlands, reintroduction faced issues associated with human activity, like damage to crops and drainage canals7. These down sides are more of a result of continual habitat loss for wild species as opposed to a problem with the animals themselves.

The benefits of reintroduction have been extensive. In places like Scotland, reduced downstream levels of phosphorus and nitrogen because of dams have been observed, as well as the presence of organisms indicative of enriched conditions9.

In Britain, reintroduction trials have resulted in increased biodiversity in plant and animal species, and more diverse landscapes that support different wildlife and human activities11.

There are also some unintended benefits of beaver reintroduction. A study in Sweden reflects on the unexpected irruption of the beaver population, which is usually expected to not occur because the species faces the same aboriginal factors that regulated their numbers before extinction8. Witnessing the irruption of the Sweden beaver populations led researchers to more closely assess the relevant environmental factors and theorize that wolves might be the missing aboriginal factor that would have limited the beaver population8. Reintroducing and monitoring beavers in Sweden raised further awareness and knowledge about how the environment might have been kept in check before human alteration. It lifted new questions and information that can be used in further research and theorizing.

Tourism is another factor not as frequently considered with beaver reintroduction. Wildlife tourism can be a dissenting topic because of its history of environmental damage and intrusion in ecosystems. But more recent research has enabled it to become less intrusive and able to help people learn about the environment without harming it. In Great Britain, one study found tourism to see a reintroduced population of beavers has been economically beneficial to the local community10. Many people now actively seek out positive experiences with the environment, especially when it involves cute rodents. Fortunately, this provides more reason for environmental initiatives to protect and improve the ecosystems around us.

Reintroduction takes decades if not centuries. After hundreds of years without a major species, ecosystems need time to readjust. Additionally, animal species cannot be simply classified as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. They can be invasive in some places, and even in their endemic habitat might sometimes be deleterious. The spread of human influence and activity complicates the relationship that beavers have with their environment. But data and current experiences indicate that beavers are ultimately crucial to many ecosystems. We will likely continue to see these benefits as environments readjust.

Additional Resources

1.https://parks.canada.ca/pn-np/mb/riding/nature/animals/mammals/castors-beavers

2. Habitat Engineering by Beavers

3. https://ptes.org/get-informed/facts-figures/eurasian-beaver/

4.https://www.martinezbeavers.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Stringer-Gaywood-2016-The-impact-of-beavers-on-biodiversity-and-the-ecological-basis-for-their-reintroduction-to-Scotland-Mamm-Rev-DOI-10.1111-mam.12068.pdf

5.https://scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk/species/beaver/#:~:text=By%20the%2016th%20Century%2C%20the,to%20number%20around%201.2%20million.

6. https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/4007/197499749

7.https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Fran-Tattersall/publication/229639593_Reintroducing_the_European_Beaver_to_Britain_nostalgic_meddling_or_restoring_biodiversity/links/602fda36a6fdcc37a8382690/Reintroducing-the-European-Beaver-to-Britain-nostalgic-meddling-or-restoring-biodiversity.pdf

8. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2386513.pdf

9. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/fwb.12721

10. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1617138120301667

11. https://ecopsychology-journal.eu/v7/EJE%20v7_Gandy_and_Watts.pdf

[meulahke]

European Beaver, planning for a construction

[timidtresleches]

dumb brain moment

shtopor: :D me TRYING to be cute: GASP shtopor: :D??? me trying to be cute: **picks him up like simba** BOBR- shtopor (doesnt speak polish but has picked up various words): ):<

me: is now dead

[arthistoryanimalia]

#WatercolorWednesday: when taxidermy goes wrong 😬

This super stuffed beaver was in the colletion of Sir Ashton Lever (1729 – 1788), later the Leverian Museum in London. He commissioned Sarah Stone (c. 1760 – 1844) to paint watercolors of his specimens, including this one:

Sarah Stone (1760-1844) drawings, mostly of zoological subjects, for Sir Ashton Lever's Museum, 1781-5: Plate 4, Beaver. Natural History Museum of London collection.

Does it remind anyone else of the Darwin Fish logo!? 😂

[avomagazine]

Otoboke Beaver will perform at Glastonbury and Roskilde as well as two exclusive shows in London and Amsterdam

Tickets for the two exclusive shows are going fast. More information in the article linked below.

[hmtaxidermy]

Tumblr ate my last attempt at posting these.

Anyway, these are a hoard of bones my friend wanted me to clean for them!

All of these were found during their forestry class over a semester

I’m absolutely going to get better pictures of that fox skull because it’s one of the coolest things I��ve worked on.

[homunculus-argument]

I may be swinging a fruit bat in a room full of hornet's nests here, but do americans know that most of the world doesn't look the way the US does? Like, specifically concerning ethnic diversity.

Coming from Europe, the fist time I went to the US, I was shocked by it, not in a negative way but in the same "wow, that's a real thing?" sort of way as western people finding out that there actually are that kind of pillar mountains in China, or americans who had never seen Fjord Horses in anything but the movie Frozen finding out that those fantastical yellow ponies are actually real.

And it wasn't some "backcountry rural hick sees Different Colour Person for the first time and dies of shock" sort of a thing. I had travelled before, and at 19 I considered myself quite worldly enough to go to a different continent I had never been on to go meet up a man from the internet, all by myself. I had been all over Europe from Iceland to St. Petersburg and from Norway to France, I have travelled. It was a slow realisation that it's turtles all the way down, that actually got me.

Being in an airport, going from one airport to another, I wasn't surprised by the sheer range of different kinds of people I saw. Airports just look like that, all over the world. Taking one flight after another, I didn't pay much attention to that, because airports just look like that. The "wait, holy shit" didn't hit me until I was already in rural Kentucky, in a fucking Wal-Mart. And if you're an american and the thought of a late teens nordic kid stepping foot into a Wal-Mart for the frist time and thinking "wow, this is actually what America looks like, all the time" makes you want to get defensive, it was by no means a negative feeling.

It was like looking into a bag of M&Ms. That's the only way I could describe it. Every single fucking person, group or family that I saw was apparently different colour and creed than the last ones who passed by. I had never seen black women with styled hair before because in Finland almost every single black woman you see is muslim and their hair is covered. I was used to the concept of large cities being more diverse, in FInland larger cities are the places where you're most likely to see people who aren't white. And I was stunned by just how colourful the population was in goddamn Beaver Dam, Kentucky.

I'm not trying to make any kind of a political point here. I'm just talking from my own experience as a Chronically Online European who has actually been abroad: City streets that look the way they do in the US are completely foreign to most people who are not american. And every time you people start complaining about why a game that's set in Poland, made by polish creators who have never been outside of Poland, only has polish people in it, they genuinely do not know what the hell you're talking about.

[petermorwood]

A day or so ago, @dduane reblogged a long post - a Canadian magazine article from 1966 - about the Americanisation of Winnie the Pooh.

It's an Impressive Tirade in which the writer (Sheila H. Kieran) says what she thinks about letting Walt Disney have a free hand with a foreign Children's Classic.

There's mention of the previous Adaptation Endeavour, "Mary Poppins" (1964) but it's very brief, perhaps with an eye to limited column space - or maybe because All Was Said Already in a previous review.

There is, however, rather a lot about the English characters being given American accents, and about the inclusion of a new character, an American gopher (which, the article suggests, looked vague enough to the Kieran children - its target audience - that it might as well have been a mole or a beaver).

*****

And that reminded me of another bit of American Animalisation done by Disney, in the 1949 short "The Wind and the Willows" - though in this instance it's visual since the voices are, for the most part, suitably British.

They include Basil Rathbone as narrator, and a horse who sounds like George Formby. In some scenes the horse actually looks like Formby, so this voice may not be entirely accidental.

Badger, however, sounds like a Scotsman - the worst kind of stage Scotsman at that - rather than how I used to "hear" him as a C. Aubrey Smith-voiced crusty retired colonel.

That, however, is just personal preference.

However, Disney's Badger is not a proper British (more correctly, European) badger, Meles meles. Here's one, which though not the most amiable of beasts in reality, still manages to look fairly affable ("I say, old chap, whatever are you looking at?")

Instead he's a North American badger, Taxidea taxus, which not only has a less affable expression ("Hey, bud, you. Yeah, you. You lookin' at me? You lookin' at ME?") but, more important, different stripes.

Here's Disney's version alongside mine. The correction took about five minutes of pixel-tweaking.

Disney's animators could have got it right from the outset just as easily, because I'm pretty sure the reference library which provided costume info for Rat's tweed Norfolk jacket and britches included picture-books of natural history.

Come to that, any "The Wind in the Willows" after the unillustrated first edition would have been enough, and there must have been at least one copy lying around for story adaptation and scene-description purposes.

The first illustrated edition came out in the UK in 1931, and its artist was, at author Kenneth Graham's request, the very same E.H. Shepard who had illustrated the Pooh books just a few years previously...

...while this Arthur Rackham colour plate is from an edition published in 1940 in New York.

So those books wouldn't have been impossible for Disney to get.

The problem, however, is that if a word ("badger", for instance) is well known to mean one thing here, it may be Too Much Trouble to find out if the same word means something else there, with the result that finding out can sometimes come as rather a surprise.

Check the UK / US meaning of "suspenders" to see what I mean... ;->

[reasonsforhope]

In 2022, something happened in Britain for the first time in 6,000 years. Deep in the Kent countryside, a wild European bison calf was born as part of the Wilder Blean rewilding project. The last time wild European bison roamed Britain’s landscapes was after the last Ice Age, some 10,000 years ago, so it’s no wonder the calf’s arrival caused a stir. European bison were once a common sight across most of Europe. As the largest herbivore to roam the continent, European bison could be found from France all the way to the tip of the Black Sea in the Ukraine. The fossil record tells us that European bison have been roving the continent since the end of the Paleolithic Ice Age, with the earliest fossils dating back to 9,000 BC.

Now, bison are bouncing back. They have experienced a 166-fold increase in their population in the last 50 years. And these rates of return are not solely the reserve of the mighty bison. Other wild European mammals are also making a roaring comeback, and the speed of their resurgence suggests that wider, rapid natural regeneration is possible with multiple ecological, and therefore human benefits.

From 1960 to 2016, Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber) populations have ballooned 167-fold, from just a few thousand at the start of the 20th century to over 1.2 million wild beavers today. Grey seal populations have also grown by 6,273 percent and the population of Alpine ibex has risen by 417 percent. Eurasian badger populations have doubled, while Eurasian otter populations have tripled.

While these impressive rates of recovery are not reflected across all of Europe’s 250 wild mammal species, they do provide some evidence-based hope that wild mammals can once again flourish across Europe’s diverse and varied landscapes with the right support and policies in place.

The big picture

... Over the last 50 years the fate of some wild mammals across Europe has shifted. Some populations have experienced a rapid and dramatic increase over the last half century, reversing millenia of decline and offering fresh hope that nature can recover – if it’s given the chance.

Brown bear numbers have risen by an average of 44 percent between 1960 and 2016, while the Iberian lynx has seen its population grow by 252 percent. Humpback whales have seen their numbers rise by 37 percent between 1986 to 2016, while the pine marten – a natural predator to the invasive grey squirrel – has seen its population grow by 21 percent from 1986 to 2016. Some reptile species, such as the loggerhead turtle, have seen its numbers grow by 68 percent over the last 40 years.

The most impressive bounce backs, however, are among the beaver and bison – two species that play vital roles within ecosystems. Both beaver and bison populations have seen 167-fold increases over the last 50 years. These mammals help support a rich mosaic of habitats and biodiversity. Wild bison, for instance, trample and wallow in the soil and sand to create niche habitats for plants, insects and lizards, while also playing an important role in the dispersal of seeds.

Context and background

The impressive recovery rates over the past 50 years have been possible due to a shifting cultural and economic context. Alongside this, there is a growing scientific consensus of the importance of small and large mammals for sustaining biodiversity and helping ecosystems flourish. The sheer diversity of mammals, both in terms of their morphology and their roles within ecosystems, is testimony to the functions they perform. From the tiny bumblebee bat, which weighs just two grams, to behemoth blue whales, weighing in at 150,000 kilograms, mammals really do come in all shapes and sizes.

Wild mammals play a variety of leading roles within an ecosystem, from dispersing seeds, pollinating plants and regulating insect populations, to reducing disease transmission and creating niche habitats for other species. The European bison reintroduced to Kent in the UK have already started clearing paths through undergrowth, ripping the bark off trees, and wallowing around in the mud to make space for seeds and other habitats – natural processes that humans would struggle to replicate. Bison and other large herbivores are often labelled ‘ecosystem engineers’ for this very reason – they shape and manage the land they reside on.

Some species of mammals – such as the magical beaver – are considered keystone species due to their ability to shape the ecosystems around them, creating entirely new habitats through building dams where fish, birds and all manner of species can thrive. Other mammals, like bats, act as indicators of healthy and functioning ecosystems. Between 1974 and 2016, Geoffroy’s bat populations have increased 53-fold across Europe.

Wild mammals also have a role to play in reducing the damage and destruction wrought by climate breakdown. In the temperate climate of Europe, large mammals have been proven to reduce the risk of forest and wildfires by creating gaps in vegetation through grazing and trampling. In the summer of 2022, wildfires ravaged Europe, burning the second-largest area on record. As global temperatures continue to rise, wildfires will increase in their frequency and severity. Bolstering the population of large mammals could provide a useful tool in the fight against fires alongside deep and immediate cuts to emissions...

What’s more, the grazing of wild mammals can also help retain the carbon stability of soil over long periods of time. Soil contains vast amounts of carbon – more than all plants and the atmosphere combined – which makes ensuring its stability important for both climate efforts and environmental conservation. Mammals like the alpine ibex, which have seen their numbers grow by 417 percent from 1975 to 2016, are highly effective at stabilising soil carbon within grazing ecosystems.

-via Rapid Transition Alliance, March 29, 2023

[acesrockz]

ALPACA-TOBER!

DAY 13!

A sparkling performance!

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: The Moon (pt. 1)

Beaver Moon - the first full moon of November Beavers are known to build their winter homes in November to prepare for the first frost, which is why some say the November full moon is called a Beaver Moon. Other sources claim that the name comes from early Native American tribes setting beaver traps in November to use their pelts for warmth in the winter months.

Blood Moon - a full moon that coincides with a full lunar eclipse and that has an unusually reddish appearance During a full lunar eclipse (when the full moon is completely in the darkest part of Earth's shadow) a small amount of the sun's light from around the edges of the Earth passes through the Earth's atmosphere and hits the surface of the moon. Because of the properties of the different colors of light, the moon appears red. (More dust or particles in the Earth's atmosphere will make the moon appear redder.) The red appearance of these full moons gives them their name.

Blue Moon - the second full moon in a calendar month Because most months have more than 29.5 days, there's bound to be some months with more than one full moon. When you have two full moons in a single calendar month, the second is called a blue moon. The term blue moon is also used in the phrase "once in a blue moon" to describe something that happens very rarely.

Harvest Moon - the full moon nearest the time of the September equinox The full moon that occurs closest to the fall equinox (approximately September 23rd) is the one called the harvest moon. Usually in September but sometimes in October, the harvest moon is so named because of the extra moonlight it provides in the evenings to farmers harvesting their summer crops. The angle of the moon's orbit relative to the horizon causes the fall full moon to rise faster than usual, which makes it seem like the moon is rising at the same time (near sunset) for several nights in a row, providing bright moonlight for harvesting.

Hunter's Moon - the full moon after the harvest moon The term has origins from the Algonquin tribes. It is apparently called this because this is the time of year when hunters would begin to store meat for the winter months. Like the harvest moon, the hunter's moon also appears to rise faster providing extended moonlight for hunting in the evening.

Long Night Moon - the full moon that occurs nearest the winter solstice Also known as the Moon Before Yule. The winter solstice is also the day with the fewest daylight hours and the longest night, hence this moon's name.

Strawberry Moon - June's full moon Either the last full moon of spring or the first full moon of summer, the strawberry moon occurs in June and signals the start of the summer, when strawberries ripen in the US. The name apparently comes from the Algonquin tribes. A European name for this moon is the Rose Moon, or the Honey Moon.

Supermoon - a full moon occurring when the moon is at or near the closest point to Earth in its orbit When the moon orbits the Earth, it is not always the same distance from the Earth. When a full moon reaches the point in its orbit that is closest to Earth, known as the perigee, it appears brighter than at other points and so we call it a supermoon. Originally, the term supermoon was used to describe either a full moon or a new moon occurring at or near perigee but later, the meaning was restricted to only a full moon at this orbital point.

Wolf Moon - the first full moon of the year 'Wolf moon' is the name for the first full moon in a calendar year, and since a full moon occurs every 29.5 days (a period known as the synodic month), the wolf moon always occurs in January.

This graphic shows the position of the Moon and the Sun during each of the Moon’s phases and the Moon as it appears from Earth during each phase. Not to scale.

Moon Phases:

Earthshine:

Though the Moon is in a crescent phase in this photograph, most of the darkened, Earth-facing side of the Moon is still dimly visible, illuminated by sunlight reflecting off our planet. This reflected light is called earthshine.

Daytime Moons:

The waxing Moon rises over a ridge in the Wasatch Mountains, Utah.

Though the Moon is often thought of as a nighttime visitor, it’s also visible during the day as a faint, pale presence. The best times to see a daytime Moon are perhaps during the first and last quarter phases, when the Moon is high enough above the horizon and at about 90 degrees from the Sun in the sky. This helps make the Sun’s reflected light bright enough to see as it reflects off of the Moon. The Moon can be seen in the daylit sky at any phase except for the new moon, when it’s invisible to us, and full moon, when it’s below the horizon during the day. The crescent through quarter phases are high in the sky during the day, but the daytime gibbous phases can be glimpsed only just before the Sun sets.

Sources: 1 2

If these writing notes helped with your poem/story, please tag me. Or leave a link in the replies. I'd love to read them!

Writing Notes: The Moon (pt. 2) ⚜ Writing Notes & References

[mathmodder]

Get Wild Mod by MathModder (In Progress)

What you need to know:

This mod introduces wild animals into your game map that spawn naturally in beetle spawners. It includes birds, small mammals, amphibians, more insects and reptiles in nature zones. Birds can fly and land in random locations and ground animals can be seen walking around the map.

You can choose ONE from various versions that best suit your world. Select the version that spawns specific animals suitable for your World's location.

Here's a list of potential versions that will be included in the mod:

All Wildlife (City World)*

All Wildlife (Medieval / Country town)**

American Wildlife (City World)*

American Wildlife (Medieval / Country town)**

European Wildlife (City World)*

European Wildlife (Medieval / Country town)**

African Wildlife (City World)*

African Wildlife (Medieval / Country town)**

Eastern Wildlife (City World)*

Eastern Wildlife (Medieval / Country town)**

*Versions for cities will have additional specific effects that help create a more beautiful environment for your city, such as planes in the sky, fireworks, sunshine rays during the day, and sky lanterns for the All Wildlife and Eastern Wildlife version. **Versions for Medieval/Country towns will feature additional specific effects to enhance the beauty of your world, including hot air balloons in the sky, sunshine rays during the day, and more.

These additional effects mentioned above will appear rarely and randomly in your world.

Can I place individual animals in specific locations, such as on rocks or tables?

In a future update after launch, this function will be added, for now they will only spawn where there is a beetle spawner. Ground animals on the ground and birds in the air.

Is the mod heavy to run?

Within the game I am optimizing it so that a small number of animals spawn at the same time and only spawn at a maximum distance of 500 meters from the player's camera.

How many files will there be?

Because there are many animals and specific animations for each one, the files will be heavy, will be a maximum of 2 to 3 files. In tests in my game with 150 other mods from other creators, I didn't see any loss of performance due to the optimization I'm doing within the game.

It is worth mentioning that some files will need to be placed in the Overrides folder and others in the Packages folder, they will all be specified at launch.

Is this mod compatible with other effect mods?

Yes, it will be compatible.

Bugs:

Depending on the location, there may be some bugs such as birds landing in the air or animals walking a little above the ground, this is due to calculation problems on certain game surfaces and physics, whether hills or mountains, but over time I will update and see What can I do to reduce this. In this case I depend on the engine the game has and whether it is possible to correct certain errors.

Release date:

Between January and February 2024 (It is in the testing phase)

Here is the list of animals that will be included in the mod:

American Eagle Bird

Anteater

Artic Tern

Aphids

Bat

Beaver

Bees

Black Bird

Black Egret

Black Fox

Black Goose

Black Rat

Blue Bird

Blue Frog

Blue Green Parrot Bird

Blue Jay

Blue Lizard

Blue Parakeet

Blue Macaw

Booby Bird

Brown Bird

Brown Bunny

Brown Egret

Brown Hen

Brown Monkey

Brown Owl Bird

Brown Pelican Bird

Brown Squirrel

Bullfinch Bird

Bullfrog

Butterflies (many colors)

Buzzard Bird

Canary

Capercaillie Female Bird

Capercaillie Male Bird

Canadian Goose

Cardinal

Carcara Bird

Charadriidae

Chimp

Chimpmunk

Chukar partridge

Condor Bird

Cormorant

Coyote

Crow

Cicada

Cockroach

Dart Frog

Dove Bird

Dragonfly

Egret

European Goldfinch

Falcon

Female Peacock Bird

Flamingo Bird

Fox

Fireflies

Golden Monkey

Golden Pheasant

Goldfinch

Gray Frog

Gray Lizard

Gray Parrot Bird

Gray Partridge

Green Bird

Green Frog

Green Lizard

Green Parakeet

Green Parrot Bird

Harlequin Duck

Hawk

Heron Bird

Hoopoe Bird

Horn Owl Bird

Humming Bird

Humming Bird Loop

Jack Rabbit

Kinkajou

Komodo Dragon

Ladybug

Lilac-breasted Roller

Little Red Parrot

Little Yellow Bird

Little Yellow Parrot

Magpie

Mallard Bird

Marmot

Marten

Male Peacock Bird

Mole

Multicolor Bird

Nude Rat

Orange Bird

Orange Fox

Orange Frog

Owl

Pangolin

Pheasant

Pink Cockatoo

Piper Bird

Possum

Pigeon

Quero-Quero Bird

Raccoon

Raven

Red-Eyed

Red Fox

Red Frog

Red Head White Cardeal

Red Lizard

Red Panda

Red Macaw

Red-crowned Crane

Rooster

Scissor White Bird

Sea Parrot Bird

Seagull

Silver Pigeon

Skunk

Snake

Sparrow

Spiny Lizard

Stork

Striped Lizard

Swallow Bird

Toco Toucan

Tortoise

Vulture Bird

White Bunny

White Cockatoo Bird

White Diving Bird

White Fox

White Goose

White Hen

White Monkey

White Owl

White Pelican Bird

White Piper Bird

White Rat

White Squirrel

White Swan

Wild Rabbit

Woodpecker

Yellow Lizard

Yellow Parakeet

Yellow Pelican Bird

Yellow Toucan

Want to support? Be a Patreon and get Early Access! Math Modder | The Sims 3 Mods and MO-MO-MORE! | Patreon

If you have any questions, leave them in the comments and I will add them to this post!

[fatehbaz]

In 1946, Argentina introduced twenty beavers (Castor canadensis) to Tierra del Fuego (TdF) to promote the fur industry in a land deemed empty and sterile.

Beavers were brought from Canada by Tom Lamb, [...] known as Mr. North for having expanded the national frontier [...]. In the 1980s, local scientists [...] found that beavers were the main disturbers of sub-Antarctic forests. The fur industry had never been implemented in TdF and [...] beavers had expanded, crossed to Chile, and occupied most of the river streams. The Beavercene resulted in apocalyptic landscapes [...]: modified rivers, flooded lands, and dead native trees that, unlike the Canadian ones, are not resilient to flooding. [...]

At the end of the nineteenth century the state donated lands to Europeans who, in building their farms, also displaced and assassinated the indigenous inhabitants of TdF. With the settlers, livestock and plants also invaded the region, an “ecological imperialism” that displaced native populations. In doing this, eugenic and racializing knowledges mediated the human and nonhuman population politics of TdF.

---

In the 1940s, the Argentinian State nationalized these settlers’ capitals by redistributing their lands. [...] In 1946, the president of the rural association in TdF opened the yearly livestock [conference]: We, settlers and farmers of TdF have lived the evolution of this territory from the times of an absent State. [...] [T]hey allied with their introduced animals, like the Patagonian sheep or the Fuegian beaver. At a time when, after the two world wars, the category of race had become [somewhat] scientifically delegitimized, the enhancement and industrialization of animals enabled the continuation of racializing politics.

In 1946, during the same livestock ceremony in TdF, the military government claimed:

This ceremony represents the patria; it spreads the purification of our races … It is our desire to produce an even more purified and refined race to, directly, achieve the aggrandizement of Argentina.

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The increasing entanglement between animal breeding and the nation helped to continue the underlying Darwinist logic embedded in population politics. Previous explicit desires to whiten the Argentinian race started to be actualized in other terms. [...]

Settlers had not only legitimated their belonging to TdF by othering the indigenous [people], [...] but also through the idea that indigenous communities had gone extinct after genocide and disease. At that time, the “myth of extinction” helped in the construction of a uniform nation based on erasing difference, as a geography textbook for school students, Historia y Geografía Argentinas, explained in 1952: If in 1852 there were 900,000 inhabitants divided in 90,000 whites, 585,000 mestizos, 90,000 [Indigenous people] and 135,000 [...] Black, a century later there was a 90% of white population out of 18,000,000 inhabitants. (357) [...] [S]tate statistics contributed to the erasure of non-white peoples through the magic of numbers: it is not that they had disappeared, but that they had been statistically exceeded [...]. However, repressed communities never fully disappear.

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Text by: Mara Dicenta. "The Beavercene: Eradication and Settler-Colonialism in Tierra del Fuego". Environment & Society Portal, Arcadia (Spring 2020), no. 1. Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society. [Image by Mara Dicenta, included in original article. Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[probablyasocialecologist]

North America once housed more beavers than humans — by a lot. Even before Europeans showed up and built an entire extractive economy on beaver pelts, estimates put the number in the hundreds of millions (during the Pleistocene, there were even giant species of beaver, as large as bears). The North American fur trade, which lasted for centuries, nearly wiped beavers off the continent — and, unknown to trappers, vastly changed its ecosystems from sea to sea. “There is evidence that riverscapes across the West were much more complex and ‘anastomosed’ prior to European colonization,” says Nicholas Kolarik, a Ph.D. student working with Brandt, who is focusing on mapping data sets of wetlands. Anastomosis denotes branches connecting two things, like organs in the body, but in this case, he means streams, since waterways in the U.S. West used to be much more interconnected. Today, they’re “starved of wood,” he says, but by adding wood into streams and rivers, especially by building dams, beavers slow water down significantly. “In doing so, sediment is stored, water infiltrates into the aquifers, riparian vegetation establishes, habitat is created, and carbon is stored,” Kolarik says.

[...]

“Beavers maintain healthy riverscapes which store carbon and water. Consistent access to water is key to mitigating the effects of climate disturbances like drought.” Beavers’ role as firefighters has already been documented in Idaho. A 2018 technical report by Anabranch Solutions, a river restoration company, found that beavers were a major factor in decreasing burn intensity along Baugh Creek during that year’s Sharps Fire. “Where active beaver dams were present, native riparian vegetation persisted, unburnt,” the authors wrote. In our hotter and fierier world, beavers are a buffer.