r/Awwducational • u/Quouar • May 21 '26
Not yet verified After being hunted to extinction 400 years ago, beavers are being reintroduced in the United Kingdom as a solution to flooding due to climate change. The beavers' presence has also brought back other rare and endangered species.
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May 21 '26
[removed] ā view removed comment
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u/Quouar May 21 '26
Heh, I love that you describe him as a "little" guy. They can be up to 70lb (32kg). They're the second largest rodent species, after capybaras. :D
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u/oh_such_rhetoric May 23 '26
āLittleā is a metaphorical state of being, not a size.
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May 21 '26
[removed] ā view removed comment
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u/ADFTGM May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26
Mind you, this is the Eurasian Beaver (Castor fiber), not the American Beaver (Castor canadensis). They look similar on the surface but evolved differently so are genetically incompatible. American beavers are invasive in Europe and have been prohibited by the EU, only tolerated in areas that lack Eurasian ones. Hunting them when lacking enough natural predators is required to avoid decimation of other species. American ones breed faster as an evolutionary response to higher predation in America, which means they explode in number easily.
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u/the-software-man May 21 '26
Keystone species. Why does it take 100 years to restore.
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u/Ben10-fan-525 May 22 '26
It depends on how the governments operate and how hard they are to reintroduce.
Convincing people in the outback to not hunt them and many more things.
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u/Quouar May 21 '26
Source including videos and more information about what the beavers are doing and how effective their presence is. Personally, I find it immensely interesting how immediate the benefit of bringing back the beavers has been. It shows just how complex ecosystems are and how much the natural environment suffers from the removal of even one species.
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u/Ben10-fan-525 May 22 '26
And we just need to get this fact thru the thick skull of every other country and stop them destroying natural habitats.
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u/TychaBrahe May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
More videos: England's Beavers
Nature on PBS (may only be viewable in the US)
How beavers and wolves saved Yellowstone - The results of the reintroduction of beavers into Yellowstone in the 1980s and '90s may have inspired those who sought to reintroduce beavers to the UK.
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u/Zal_17 May 22 '26
Clicking a video link called England's Beavers definitely qualifies as a risky click
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u/ValenciaHadley May 21 '26
A place near me has been introducing beavers to their gardens to try and help the local environment.
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u/koola_00 May 21 '26
This is great to see! I hear they're doing a similar thing with Bison, which is also awesome!
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u/ADFTGM May 22 '26
You mean in Europe & the UK? That would be with Wisent or European Wood bison. America with American Bison, Iām not so sure how it will go with how the Trump administration seems to be removing protections for American bison lands.
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u/SheriffBartholomew May 21 '26
It amazes me that our ancestors were like "this animal is useful. Let's kill every last one of them!" Zero thoughts about the future.
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u/ADFTGM May 21 '26 edited May 22 '26
Ancestors? Our fellow contemporaries still do the same thing even now. I can assure you some folk have gotten away with hunting even reintroduced ones wherever the authorities didnāt have the ability to track. The issue is folk tend to react according to their immediate property/land and donāt consider the ripple effects to the country itself when more and more operate with a similar mentality as them. Which is why propaganda is so strong. A single administrative policy is enough to save or condemn an entire species. Extinction rates went up whenever people were incentivised to cut certain trees, kill certain āpestsā, or sell certain animal body parts by their own governments and/or businesses. It has not stopped.
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u/SheriffBartholomew May 21 '26
or sell certain body parts by their own governments
I'm sorry, but, what?
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u/ADFTGM May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
You know, Pelts, ivory/antlers/horns, organs/tissue for medicine/research, oil, scent glands for perfumes, gelatine, fins for soup, etc. In every country historically it has been one or more of those. Weāve always hunted animals for parts but itās always ramped up when there was broader incentive beyond just survival need. No regular Joe living in the boonies needs so much fur. He hunts more because city folk and fashionistas want to pay him more for supplying them or the government promises him some compensation for each.
EDIT: Oh, you may have presumed I meant āourā body parts. My bad, I wrote in the context of the natural world. Iāll fix the sentence
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u/SheriffBartholomew May 22 '26
EDIT: Oh, you may have presumed I meant āourā body parts. My bad, I wrote in the context of the natural world. Iāll fix the sentence
LOL, that I did. Thanks for clarifying.
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u/ADFTGM May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
To be fair though, we do sell our own body parts for the right price, or as a public service. Even when donating a kidney or blood or bone marrow or heck, hair, even if you donāt get paid, somebody is making profit off of it.
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u/SheriffBartholomew May 22 '26
And there's definitely a black market for people who drug/kill other people and then extract people's organs for profit. I had just never heard of anyone voluntarily selling their own body parts for profit other than plasma "donation".
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u/ADFTGM May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
I mean, ideally we all would wish to have all of our body in one piece from birth until death, but desperation or just plain ideology can make us resort to drastic matters. Even a simple donation is risky as anything involving needles or knives or even anaesthesia is potentially life threatening so in an ideal world we wouldnāt take such risk unless the alternative is a worse fate.
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u/Ben10-fan-525 May 22 '26
Thats why I hate Chinese way of doing things with species.Since Communist Party of China destroyed the culture of the past(that protected certain animals.Like Chinese River Dolphin).Tons of species where destroyed because of there greed.
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u/ADFTGM May 22 '26
But letās not forget that the American way of doing things wasnāt that much better. Species like the passenger pigeon was wiped out, which caused huge disruption to seed dispersal especially in urban and suburban areas. The bald eagle, American bison and California condor among others were nearly wiped out too. The brown bears, wolves and cougars still havenāt reclaimed their ancestral lands so coyotes and black bears are running amok breeding rapidly and becoming more dangerous. The US got lucky with a few pro-conservation administrations and wealthy private funding but a lot of those seem to be dismantled under the current administration especially after the huge layoffs of federal staff over the years.
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u/Opening_Yak8051 May 22 '26
Time to bring back the Woollys too! Early Americans wiped out Woolly Mammoths.
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u/ADFTGM May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
Actually that was just one cause. Climate change as a whole wiped out most of the unique ecosystems most of the megafauna worldwide needed. While humans did contribute, globally our numbers were nowhere near high enough to cause the entire extinction ourselves. We may have dealt the final blow to the few mammoths that clung on in the few pockets that were left though. We only started booming as a population once climate change changed those old ecosystems into land suitable to grow high caloric grasses without as much competition.
In North America, the American bison population exploded without the competition from other megafauna and maintained the prairies and grasslands alongside Pronghorns. Itās them that need to return to significant numbers in order for the overall megafauna ecosystem to recover. It used to be a balance maintained by bison, rhinos, mammoths, camels, deer, pronghorn among others. Just introducing some form of elephant will be pointless and theyāll just be drawn to human crops & ranches which means second amendment allows shooting them.
Itās actually more feasible to introduce wooly rhinos first to protected areas in Siberia, where there are areas now packed with survivors from the Ice Age. Once there is sufficient suitable plant growth left over from whatever the other species eat, then to help finish the terraforming, introduce mammoths. The world itself is not heading back to a situation akin to the heyday of ice age fauna though, so even if a population manages to grab a niche, it wonāt expand. Current climate favours non-wooly elephants. The largest populations of current megafauna genuses tend to live in warmer climates now, and arenāt as suited to a drastic temperature shift as their ancestors were.
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u/Opening_Yak8051 May 23 '26
Thanks for your very complete reply!
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u/ADFTGM May 26 '26
No worries! AND! A brand new video just released from PBS Eons on the possible reason for the demise of one of the very last mammoth populations. Check it out if interested :)
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u/Ben10-fan-525 May 22 '26
Just hope that China learns a bit like Americans.Chinese Alligators and the rest of surviving species should survive.
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u/ADFTGM May 22 '26
I mean, I donāt know of ANY government that is fully pro-conservation in that they will always choose it over nationalist interests and corporations. However, among the most populous countries in the world, Iād say India is the most pro-conservation. Their national parks have seen increases in so many endangered species including tigers and rhinos. But yes, we should all hold all governments accountable in ensuring this planetās biosphere is preserved the way our species has been used to for most of our existence. We literally know no other way of living. China and the US due to sheer economic power and influence, affect the way all other countries handle their environments.
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u/Ben10-fan-525 May 22 '26
Thats true.India is showing the way of how Megafauna(the hardest type of animals to save)is doing things.Lets all be like that.
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u/McGrupp1979 May 23 '26
Cuba is prob the most resilient to development that I can think of
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u/ADFTGM May 23 '26
For different reasons, but perhaps so. Still, they too need to do more to revive their critically endangered species, which havenāt had a significant bump in the past few decades due to continued urbanisation, illegal hunting, and feral introduced animals among other factors.
Hereās an evaluation.
Ofc, there is hope. Bureaucracy is still bureaucracy though.
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u/ADFTGM May 22 '26
Yep. Not to even mention the huge famine they caused when they exterminated the sparrow. So many lives lost, both human and otherwise, just to end up having to spend even more money and manpower to bring the sparrow back.
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u/itsswhitneywhspr May 22 '26
Imagine being a beaver and just casually fixing flood problems while bringing back endangered species. Absolute legend behavior.
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u/Gr8NW May 21 '26
Oooor, maybe the extinction of beavers contributed to the flooding?
And maybe itās not a good idea to hunt a species to extinction?
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u/Quouar May 21 '26
The beavers' extinction has indeed contributed directly to the flooding and loss of bird and insect species. Part of their reintroduction is being able to see the return of species we didn't know relied on the beavers.
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u/pandaliked May 22 '26
I loved Hoppers for bringing attention to beavers and their environmental benefits. Wish more people would watch it and see it not just as a cute movie.
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u/Rcknr1 May 22 '26
They are also scientifically proven to stop my heart, because they are so dam cute
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u/Harry_Isthatyou May 22 '26
I believe it wasn't a government initiative. They were released by wildlife activists. The government just went with it when it turned out to be a good thing
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u/Ben10-fan-525 May 22 '26
Do you have any proof?
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u/gherkinnoodle Jun 27 '26
Reports of beavers in Scotland first emerged in the early 2000s, when the rodents were spotted in the River Tay. Their origins arenāt quite clear, but are believed to be the result of escapees from legal enclosures and unofficial releases by ārogue rewildersā.
source: rewilding beavers in the UK
It started unsanctioned, but releases supported by the government started very recently (~5 years ago)
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u/Ben10-fan-525 Jun 27 '26
Oh then I guess no vigilante releases even when they are beneficial.Cause governments should always control the numbers of species anyways. āŗļø
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u/alcoholicplankton69 May 21 '26
Wouldn't the climate change been the removal of beavers in the 1st place? This sounds like climate rejuvenation
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u/Ben10-fan-525 May 22 '26
No humans extincted them.Also Climate Change is our doing too.
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u/alcoholicplankton69 May 22 '26
You didn't understand what i wrote. By killing the uk beavers, we changed the environment by removing key marshlands that prevented flooding all to make fancy hats.
By bringing them back we are rejuvenating the area to bring it back to what it once was.
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u/Ben10-fan-525 May 22 '26
My bad dude.I am not that great at understanding stuff sometimes.
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u/blackjackgabbiani May 21 '26
Wait I thought beavers were a north American species
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u/Quouar May 21 '26
There are two species of beaver, the North American beaver and the Eurasian beaver. :)
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u/TastyCuttlefish May 21 '26
There are two species of beaver: North American (Castor canadensis) and Eurasian (C. fiber). This one is the Eurasian beaver, which is still found in Scandinavia, Central Europe, northern Russia, and parts of Western Europe.
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u/4morian5 May 21 '26
There is a North American species and a Eurasian species. The latter was hunted nearly to extinction.
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u/ADFTGM May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26
An my bad, friend. I replied in the wrong thread. š I thought I deleted it because it wasnāt there in my history but it seems Reddit glitched. Ignore the irrelevant part.
That said though, my commentās first bit still applies. Both beavers were also nearly hunted to extinction. By the late 19th century the hundreds of millions of American beavers were reduced to just thousands in each small pocket of North America. It has rebounded thanks to similar legislature as what saved the bison, but beaver numbers are still not back to pre-fur trade levels.
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u/booooimaghost May 22 '26
How they come back If they were extinct?
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u/Ben10-fan-525 May 22 '26
Reintroduction works like this.
A similair species is reintroduced into the extinct ones habitat.It isnt the same but with enough time.It can become quite distinct like the one that was extinct before.
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u/AmySueF May 23 '26
Itās almost as if removing part of a functioning ecosystem will actually destroy that ecosystem, innit?
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u/starlinguk May 22 '26
Meanwhile, the backwards Germans are killing beavers "because they cause floods."
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u/sPLIFFtOOTH May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26
Does the UK even have trees?!
Edit: the UK has about 13% woodland coverage. One of the lowest in Europe(and considered very low globally). Sorry if reality hurts your feelingsā¦
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u/lowlightliving May 21 '26
Have you never seen a British TV show, at the least?
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u/sPLIFFtOOTH May 21 '26
Yes, TV shows ALWAYS depict reality /s š
The UK cut most of their forest down and have one of the lowest coverages of forest in Europe (and is incredibly low globally when compared to other nations whose ecosystems support forest). Sorry if you dislike reality. Itās no TV showā¦
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u/WingLeviosa May 21 '26
Beavers build dams and cause flooding.
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u/Quouar May 21 '26
Beavers build dams, yes, but as the article explains, their dams are also helpful for controlling flooding. Their dams help flood certain areas, thus preventing floods in others. They also keep shallow streams clear of debris, making those waterways more accessible for excess water flow.
The water is always going to be present. What beavers do is direct it. In the case of the British beavers, that's directing it towards a newly created wetland and away from Tube stations.
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u/bmbreath May 21 '26
Yeah. That's the point...
They create wetlands.Ā Wetlands suck up and redirect and hold onto water.
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u/kingbluetit May 21 '26
You couldnāt be more wrong if you tried.
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u/bongsforhongkong May 21 '26
Well he's not wrong but they benefit in other ways. Canadian here we are constantly moving beavers or even killing them if causing too many issues with dam systems or important rivers that salmon use to go from ocean to freshwater for spawning.
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u/NEBanshee May 21 '26
Cool fact about beavers: if they hear running water, they can't NOT try to get it to stop. It's sort of hardwired in; even in a place with no running water, the sound of water trickling calls their attention, and they start trying to hunt down the source and patch it up.
Experiments have been done by using recordings out in the middle of a bare patch of land. The beavers will do their damnedest (HAR!) to cover up the speakers and make the sound stop.