MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Argentina plans to cull 100.000 beavers devastating Tierra del Fuego woodlands
Argentina will cull 100,000 beavers which are devastating southern woodlands by gnawing down huge trees, officials said this week. The plague of big-toothed rodents has struck in the Tierra del Fuego province, a far southern region known as “the End of the World.” Read full article
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Disclaimer & comment rulesAnother magnificent conquest coming to the bat-shit mad 'End of the World' argies only this time the kill will be easier, although it will take 10 - 15 years said the region's conservation chief Erio CUNTO (I think there might be a spelling error there).
Nov 16th, 2016 - 11:35 am - Link - Report abuse -1If this idiot (see below) wants to find out what to do to conserve the trees in an area populated by beavers he should go and talk to the US and Canada, they have been doing it for many decades.
”We are talking about trees that are 100 or 150 years old and they do not grow back,” said CUNTO. Presumably this idiot has not understood how to replace trees with party grown ones from areas being 'thinned out' or even grown in dedicated replant areas.
I suspect, as always with SA and The Dark Country in particular it's just too much trouble to be arsed.
What makes you think it would be preferable to manage a non-native species rather than eradicate it? In North America the trees have adapted to beavers and many are able to grow back from the roots, in TdF they simply die. Managing an invasive species that has no natural predators is not going to be the same as dealing with one in its natural habitat, and what about the risk that they escape to the mainland and cause an exponentially bigger disaster?
Nov 16th, 2016 - 01:14 pm - Link - Report abuse +1The fact it's being proposed by two South American governments doesn't automatically make the plan wrong.
“...what about the risk that they escape to the mainland..”
Nov 16th, 2016 - 03:00 pm - Link - Report abuse +3They are already on the mainland and control efforts have been underway for some time by the Chilean government. The beavers have been found just to the south of Punta Arenas and I have heard reports of sightings near Torres del Paine national park. The chilean park/forest service, the CONAF, has reports of beavers on the mainland back to the 1990s.
The beavers' direct felling of the trees in southern Tierra del Fuego (and on the chilean side of the main island) is actually just a small part of the larger problem. From the looks of things around Lago Fagnano, for every tree downed by beaver teeth, a hundred or more are killed from the effects of the beaver ponds' drowning the trees. Add to that the matter of the extremely slow growth rates for most native trees at this latitude.
There was a beaver control agreement signed between Chile and Argentina back in 2011 or so but Argentina never came up with the money to implement it. We can guess where the money went instead. But part of the delay is also from the animalistas in both countries who are trying to prevent the eradication.
@ DT
Nov 16th, 2016 - 06:00 pm - Link - Report abuse -1Please read my paragraph 3.
CUNTO has ambitious plans to kill 100,000 beavers in 10 years' They have to kill at least 41 beavers per working day. I suspect they would be lucky to see that many per day.
I can see the beavers thriving in the ten years given the incompetence of the argies.
“The fact it's being proposed by two South American governments doesn't automatically make the plan wrong.”
Really? I used to be as 'optimistic' as you, but then learnt to go with the flow and live with the reality.
You wouldn't last 12 months down here.
@ ChrisR
Nov 16th, 2016 - 08:21 pm - Link - Report abuse +1Apparently going with the flow means becoming too lazy to judge ideas on their merits and instead dismissing them based only on who proposed them.
If they are so incompetent, why would they do any better at planting trees than killing beavers? Besides, if Marti is right and the lakes are drowning the trees, what are they supposed to do, plant them under water?
Anyway, whether they will actually come up with the money and make it happen is a different question from whether it's a good plan. I wouldn't like to bet that it will actually happen as planned.
I go down to Punta Arenas about once a month or so for shopping at their Zona Franca and elsewhere. Down by the pier on the other side of town there is a municipal fish market and we sometimes go up on their second floor for a merluza lunch. There is also a fancier restaurant on the lee side of the building. Fancier, in the sense that they used to serve locally “harvested” beaver meat. The Chilean CONAF encourages hunting those beavers and I think the agricultural folks at their SAG were paying bounties on beavers killed and presented. Don't know if that is still the case. Never tried the beaver meat myself, but then I don't eat rats and snakes, either.
Nov 16th, 2016 - 09:38 pm - Link - Report abuse 0An interesting paper here in English that describes the research into when the beavers reached the continent. In one location it is believed that the beavers reached that part of the continent around 1968. Subsequent research suggests an average northward expansion of the beavers at a rate of about 5 km per year. See ”Invasion of North American beaver (Castor canadensis) in the province of Magallanes, southern Chile: comparison between dating sites through interviews with the local community and dendrochronology”
http://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0716-078X2015000100003
@ Marti Liazo
Nov 17th, 2016 - 11:53 am - Link - Report abuse 0Rabbits (Coneys) are also rodents and they are very good to eat if cooked correctly.
I have never had the chance to try beaver though!
I did try snake and it was OK, but I didn't KNOW it before I ate it. :o)
@ChrisR
Nov 17th, 2016 - 02:45 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Yes, in Spain we ate rabbit. Much of western Europe still does though not in huge quantities. Chile and Argentina export hares ( European brown hare; frozen meat) mostly to Belgium and France I think, considered a delicacy. Small quantities though. Some of it is marketed as “pizza meat.” Some of the skins go to the US. Some live hares are being sent back to Europe after native stocks there were affected by disease. The hare meat sourced in Chile is all from hunting and there is zero quality control other that what takes place to a small degree at the abattoirs. I think the Argentine exports are all from hunting “pest animals” as they call the hares. The workers on our estancia hunt the hares for meat and we encourage that. I remember a few years ago one of the Chilean SAG (agricultural inspectors) referring to the introduced hares as “wildlife” and I don't think he knew they were exotics.
The introduction of the beavers into Tierra del Fuego was one of the Perón government brainstorms.
I have seen this terrible damage but I think its too late.
Nov 17th, 2016 - 03:13 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Nothing wrong with eating a bit of beaver...
Nov 17th, 2016 - 03:34 pm - Link - Report abuse +1Nothing wrong with it indeed Mr. Voice...
Nov 17th, 2016 - 05:49 pm - Link - Report abuse +2(Did you noticed that Turnip ChrisR says above that he “never had the chance to try beaver...” ?
That explains quite a few things, don't you Think...? ;-)))
@ Marti Llazo
Nov 17th, 2016 - 06:17 pm - Link - Report abuse +2“The introduction of the beavers into Tierra del Fuego was one of the Perón government brainstorms.”
That went as well as usual then!
Voice/Think
OK, you got me. :o)
Depending on which version of the story you wish to believe, it looks like this beaver project had Perón fingerprints all over it from the beginning -- even before he became president.
Nov 17th, 2016 - 09:57 pm - Link - Report abuse 0The prevailing story seems to be this: in 1943 was a “social action” director ( installed following one of those countless military coups that put Argentina on the map and helped to forever mark it as the textbook antithesis of stable governance).
Perón designated Fidel Anadon as chief of maritime affairs for Tierra del Fuego, which at the time had all of about 2000 colonists, 10,004 sheep, and two white rats. Anadon had the bright idea, with Perón's blessing, that a fur industry would be just what the colony needed to supplement the sheep farming. In 1946, again with Perón's blessing, he evidently contracted with a Canadian outfit to supply 20 beavers (some say 20 pairs) and set them up for breeding and eventual release into the area coincidentally fairly close to where I first observed the flooded “phantom forest” effect several years ago, near lago Fagnano. Then the regional government forbade the hunting of the beavers for something like 30 years, and the rest of it is history.
I've got another interesting story about Chile's introduction of chinook salmon, for another time.
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