[jarcane]

They'll also abandon perfectly good dams just to move up stream and build another. They're some of the most environmentally destructive critters on earth; like most creatures if allowed to thrive they'll just keep devouring every tree and damming every river until they starve and die off, only beavers can wind up taking whole ecosystems with them.

[hereonbusiness]

Those sneaky bastards, I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that they've also been dumping gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year while no one was looking :)

[JoeAltmaier]

Depends on your point of view. North America used to be a festering swamp of mosquito-ridden beaver ponds. Built over millions of years. That WAS the ecology. The landscape we see today is unnatural and temporary.

We reformed this continent to suit ourselves. Most attempts to protect some bit of land and trees in the name of preservation is ... shortsighted at the least.

[jarcane]

Eh, I think the more important take from it is that any species is prone to developing an unbalanced advantage that ultimately does them in.

We humans just happen to be the ones on top right now doing the unbalanced expansion thing.

[JoeAltmaier]

I don't think the beaver did itself in? It was us (or the Iroquois Confederacy anyway) that hunted them to near extinction. They got along for 10 million years just fine the way they were.

[fnordfnordfnord]

>They're some of the most environmentally destructive critters on earth.

That's rich, coming from a human.

Also, from Wikipedia: "the beaver have transformed Alhambra Creek from a trickle into multiple dams and beaver ponds, which in turn, led to the return of steelhead and North American river otter in 2008, and mink in 2009.[43][44]"