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Canadian Beavers in Tierra del Fuego

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The Long-Term Fate of Invasive Species

Abstract

The Canadian beaver was introduced to Tierra del Fuego to provide for income from hunting in the then economically challenged province. They spread slowly but steadily and did what beavers do—built dams, created wetlands, and engineered the landscape. This led to extensive ecosystem and landscape changes, when the beaver dams altered watercourses and significantly expanded the wetlands of Tierra del Fuego, with negative consequences for native forest trees and other flora, and opened up for additional invaders, mostly alien plants. Also the native fauna was affected, mostly negatively, but the rapid recovery of the native wild lama, the guanaco, might in part be due to the new grazing possibilities on the fertile ex-bottoms of abandoned beaver ponds. Economically, the beavers have a negative influence on agriculture and forestry but a positive one on tourisms.

The governments of Argentina and Chile have agreed to and are currently planning a beaver extermination campaign.

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  1. Swedish Institute for Future Studies, Jarpas, Sweden

    Arne Jernelöv

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Jernelöv, A. (2017). Canadian Beavers in Tierra del Fuego. In: The Long-Term Fate of Invasive Species. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55396-2_16

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