The Nature of Things Season 65 Episode 2

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Transcript

00:00Wow, this is like one after the other.

00:17There are strange things done in the midnight sun,

00:20but this could be the strangest.

00:22A transformation of the Arctic that's so huge,

00:25you can see it from space.

00:27Wham.

00:30And the creature behind this radical transformation

00:32is this little guy here, the beaver.

00:36These animals work fast, they're efficient, they're strong.

00:41When beavers come in, they automatically change the world

00:44that they want to inhabit.

00:46We need to understand how things are changing.

00:48Is this something we should be hopeful,

00:50or is this more of a cautionary tale?

00:52We are in a land in science that is really uncharted territory.

00:57We just simply don't know a lot of the effects that they're going to have.

01:03This is the biggest disruption the Arctic has experienced since the Ice Age.

01:08Now, a front row seat to witness the northbound beavers from above.

01:22So being on the tundra in Alaska, I'm just outside of northern here.

01:26This is just a remarkable landscape and environment,

01:30because even though this is summertime in the Arctic,

01:33it's still pretty harsh.

01:34The summers here are windy, rainy, and cold.

01:40And the winters are even more extreme, dark, frigid, and snowy.

01:46Temperatures are already starting to drop, so there's no time to waste.

01:51Scientists are on a mission to witness a mass migration of animals

01:54that are poised to change everything.

01:57This is the Arctic tundra.

02:00No trees, not much vegetation,

02:03and a scattering of streams and ponds.

02:06Frozen in time.

02:08It's just pretty static.

02:10And that's kind of a characteristic of the Arctic,

02:12is that it's not a rapidly changing place in general.

02:19Look at that.

02:19Look at that!

02:21That's a huge pond!

02:23And there's, like, tears of damp.

02:25Tears is exactly right.

02:27All right, here's another one down here.

02:29This is amazing!

02:32So all these, you're saying, are beaver-created?

02:35Yeah, all damp.

02:37Wow!

02:38Ken Tape is an ecologist based in Alaska.

02:42He'd heard reports of beaver sightings on the tundra,

02:44but it wasn't until he got a sky-high view from above

02:47that he began to understand the magnitude of this migration.

02:54The NASA Above project,

02:56they have these fancy sensors and they put them on airplanes

02:59and fly these flight lines all over Alaska and Canada.

03:03We are analyzing that imagery to try to understand changes

03:07to the current and future Arctic ecosystem.

03:10They looked at satellite photos of Western Alaska from 50 years ago when beaver dams were scarce

03:16and compared them to the 2020s when there were over 11,000 dams and counting.

03:22The Arctic tundra is being transformed so dramatically it can be seen from space.

03:28So what's bringing these beavers north?

03:31And how are they getting here?

03:33They're coming up through all the waterways that exist in the south.

03:42This is Glynnis Hood.

03:44She's an ecologist and renowned beaver behavior researcher.

03:47As the Arctic gets warmer, you get more shrubs.

03:52So we call this shrubification of the Arctic.

03:54And the beavers are just following the food source, much like any species would.

03:59Beavers don't actually eat wood.

04:01They eat the layer just under the bark, called cambium.

04:04It's packed with carbs and nutrients.

04:07It's not only in tree bark, it's in shrubs too.

04:10And there are a lot more of those now that temperatures are going up.

04:16The Arctic's warming about two to four times faster than other parts of the planet.

04:21So it is experiencing climate change pretty rapidly.

04:25And so as the Arctic changes ecologically, it's going to have those sorts of in-kind responses

04:32from the mammals and birds that are following that movement of vegetation change north.

04:38From beavers to bumblebees, about half of all species on the planet are on the move northwards,

04:46following the average temperatures that suit them best.

04:49But few have the kind of impact that beavers do.

04:55These freshwater habitats might not have had beavers in them for millennia, if ever.

05:01So I'm on a pond that was created by a beaver, and you can see right behind me is a beaver lodge.

05:09And this is an active lodge.

05:10Oh my gosh, okay, that was a beaver right behind me, I think frustrated, annoyed at me being here right now.

05:19So I should probably leave, but there is clear evidence that a beaver is living here.

05:25A beaver slaps its tail as a danger alert, and that's not all it's good for.

05:33It's multifunctional, like a Swiss Army knife.

05:37Underwater, it's used for thrust and navigation.

05:41On land, it's used for balance and stability when standing upright.

05:45Body temperature can be regulated by adjusting blood flow in the tail.

05:51And the tail stores fat for wintertime survival.

05:54Come springtime, it's a lot skinnier.

05:57All these tail functions come in handy, because a beaver's work is never done.

06:03They're called ecosystem engineers, and so when beavers come into the Arctic, they automatically change the world that they want to inhabit.

06:12If they come into a stream system, and they want a pond in that system, they'll build a dam.

06:19That dam then backs up water, and you create these pretty extensive ponds.

06:23We're really talking about something that transforms the landscape on a large scale.

06:28This is potentially a big deal.

06:29It's a big enough deal that it's attracting researchers from around the world.

06:37Ken comes here with a team twice a year, braving the frigid Arctic winter.

06:43And then later in the summer, braving the swarms of bugs.

06:50They have to work fast, because days are already getting shorter and colder.

06:55It's blowing pretty hard, pretty rainy, it's intense.

07:00But that's not stopping these scientists from getting to their research sites.

07:03So, we're out in Nome twice a year, studying the impacts of beaver engineering.

07:09We're studying all the changes associated with that water quality, biodiversity, thawing permafrost,

07:15and all the implications of those changes to the current and future Arctic ecosystem.

07:26Okay, so we're kind of in the middle of nowhere, and we're standing in this stream.

07:30Why have you brought me here?

07:31I have brought you here because this is what an Arctic stream looks like, not just here, but across the Arctic, before beavers arrive.

07:41Okay, so kind of not very deep, relatively narrow, and there's a lot of shrubs that are a lot taller than I was anticipating.

07:50Yeah, these are big shrubs for the Arctic.

07:52This is another thing that's changed a lot in the last 30 years, 50 years, 100 years.

07:57The summers have gotten longer, shrubs have gotten a lot taller, more extensive on the landscape.

08:02And maybe that's part of the reason the beavers arrive too, right?

08:05Because beavers need something to eat all winter, and so there's a lot more shrubby vegetation.

08:10And the reason we brought you here is because we're going to walk around the corner

08:15and just see how vastly different it is once the beaver shows up. It's another world.

08:22Wow, the biggest thing that I'm seeing is the amount of water before us.

08:28I was just not expecting that. And that's all from that beaver over there.

08:32We weren't expecting it either.

08:33Yeah.

08:34Yeah.

08:34If this pond wasn't here, this would all be shrubs?

08:38Shrubs, and then that narrow little stream like we were on back up here.

08:42Yeah, like that narrow little stream we were standing on.

08:45Yeah. Is no longer present.

08:46Is no longer, exactly. And there's like three more tiers of this dam going downstream.

08:54Why would that benefit the beaver?

08:56When you put in that upper dam, it takes a lot of the water pressure off of this dam.

09:00Right.

09:01So they're all kind of working together.

09:03I mean, the complexity involved in all of this is extraordinary.

09:09Each year we come back, these ponds are different.

09:12Sometimes there's new ponds. Sometimes old ponds have drained.

09:15When you're on the ground, it's super interesting to study beavers.

09:17But are you talking about dozens of new beaver ponds?

09:20Or are we talking about thousands of new beaver ponds?

09:22And really pretty early on in this work, you know,

09:25we realized that it was thousands or even tens of thousands of beaver ponds.

09:29They cherry picked 11 of those ponds to monitor from the Baldwin Peninsula down to the Seward Peninsula.

09:37Benjamin Jones travels to this research site called S4 every year.

09:42He's based at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks.

09:46Ben's been mapping tundra changes using drone technology for a bird's eye view of what the beavers are up to.

09:53Four years ago, I set up a really fancy GPS unit, Global Positioning System unit,

09:58and I let that record for an entire day.

10:00Every drone survey I do is basically relative to one another.

10:03So I can measure really accurately how the land surface is changing vertically,

10:07as well as how these pond areas are changing over time as beavers build more dams.

10:12We actually came to this site because of this beaver lodge and dam right here.

10:17But in the past four years since we've been studying this site,

10:19the beavers have decided to build a second dam and lodge a little bit further upstream.

10:25So it is very exciting to me.

10:27Science can move awfully slow sometimes.

10:29And these beavers are moving way faster than we are, you know?

10:31That's true.

10:32So it's kind of nice that we're finally to the point where I think we're catching up a little bit.

10:35Yeah.

10:36We have several years of field data now, several years of aerial drone data.

10:41So it feels really good to be at the front line of this new change going on in the Arctic.

10:47There are some things that can't be measured from the air.

10:50We can see the edges of a pond, but we can't see what's happening beneath and beyond those edges.

10:56That takes special equipment.

10:59A pointy stick.

10:59This is about all they trust me with is the probe and the tape measure.

11:04Nothing too fancy, but this is called a thaw probe.

11:07The idea here is you're going to push this thing down and it kind of takes a few shots like that.

11:13Keep going and then right there, you hear sort of a thunk.

11:16Yeah.

11:17And it stops.

11:18Okay, sounds like you hit it pretty fast.

11:21So not too far down.

11:22Wow.

11:22Even after, you know, three months of summer.

11:25The ground doesn't thaw down very far.

11:27This stuff right here, right?

11:28All this organic material is super insulating and it's cold and it's wet.

11:33And so it just accumulates.

11:34This organic layer has kept the permafrost frozen for 11,000 years.

11:40But all bets are off if it gets wet.

11:42Beaver creates this pond and suddenly there's a lot of heat stored in that water

11:47and a lot of heat that's being conducted into that frozen ground surrounding the beaver pond.

11:52And as we start getting into these wet areas by the pond,

11:55you find that the permafrost has thawed quite a bit and it's a lot deeper.

11:59So the closer to the edges of the pond, the more the permafrost thaws.

12:04But what's it look like under the pond itself?

12:06Environmental geophysicist Rodrigo Rangel and geographer Mike Laranti have a ground-penetrating

12:14radar device and it does exactly what it sounds like.

12:18It uses radar to see what's going on below.

12:23We are looking how the beaver ponds are impacting the permafrost below.

12:28So we are looking how deep the permafrost thaw.

12:32Regular radar waves reflect off of solid objects,

12:35but Rodrigo's gear can actually go through the water, through the pond bottom,

12:40and right down into the frozen layer of permafrost below.

12:46They've taken measurements before when the pond was frozen solid,

12:50but this is the first time they've done it in the summer.

12:54Ideally you want to keep tracking that over time and see how is that evolving.

12:59And the first time you're looking for the permafrost, you're looking for a lot of carbon,

13:03and that's been a little bit more interesting than that.

13:04And you're looking for a lot of carbon.

13:05You're looking for a lot of carbon that's been stored for thousands of years,

13:08and that makes its way back up into the atmosphere and feeds back to further climate warming.

13:14It's like meat in a freezer.

13:16It starts to decompose and then release greenhouse gases.

13:19And so I've been thinking about the people who live in these areas.

13:21It may affect fisheries, it may affect their water resources, and so understanding what's going on

13:28in the subsurface may help foreshadow some changes that, you know, are going to happen

13:33when beavers become more prolific on the landscape.

13:36High-tech toys like GPRs and drones can tell us a lot about the impact of beavers in the Arctic.

13:42But sometimes old-school tools can be just as effective, whether it's a pointy stick

13:48or a rubber hose, like Sebastian Zavojko has here.

13:52This whole system is really simple.

13:53Yeah.

13:54Right there.

13:56And then we'll stick it into the pump here.

13:59Okay, so this pump is pulling in the water?

14:02That's right.

14:02Okay.

14:03And then, yeah, just stick it in the water.

14:06Here we go.

14:07What we're basically doing is we are filtering water through this,

14:12and then we're going to take that filter, extract the DNA from it,

14:15sequence it, and see what's in the water.

14:18And we're specifically going to look at macroinvertebrates, little bugs, and also fish.

14:22Okay.

14:23Mm-hmm.

14:24So when you say you're looking at how beavers have impacted the water in terms of biodiversity,

14:30you're looking at the animals that are here that maybe weren't there before?

14:33Mm-hmm.

14:33Yep.

14:34Okay.

14:34I'm studying how beavers are changing the aquatic environment.

14:40You can't see it with the naked eye, but back at the lab, Sebastian's samples will show

14:45evidence that in a beaver pond, the still water gives new species opportunities to take hold.

14:51These could be the beginning of a whole new food chain.

14:56If beavers build it, will they come?

15:00We are in a land in science that is really uncharted territory.

15:06We don't know how they're going to affect the permafrost.

15:09We don't know how they're going to affect the food web.

15:12We don't know how biodiversity is going to be affected.

15:16How far can beavers live in the Arctic and still produce young,

15:21multi-generational family units and really establish themselves?

15:26How far north can they go and survive?

15:30The word is that increasing numbers of beavers are now moving into Canada's Northwest Territories,

15:36all the way up to the Arctic coastline.

15:39The Canadian Shield is a very different place than you have here.

15:43And so we are working pretty closely with our counterparts in Canada to try to get the research

15:49and the indigenous knowledge and the land managers all on the same page.

15:54These scientists have been investigating the beaver migration from every angle,

16:00from the sky to ponds and wetlands to the DNA of new creatures following in the beaver's wake.

16:07But we're still missing a big part of the picture.

16:10And that is, what is the perspective from people who will be living on these lands for generations?

16:16Like folks in Canada's Northwest Territories, where beavers have rarely been seen before.

16:24Holy man, look at that. Back and bigger than ever. We have a beaver problem.

16:39I am here in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region in the Northwest Territories.

16:44I am very far north, close to the Beaufort Sea, and I am sitting on the Arctic tundra.

16:49This is the end of summer, so everything's kind of in bloom right now.

16:54We have a lot of greenery. We have shrubs. We have three different species of berry in front of me,

16:59lichens and mosses. It's very rich, but everything is close to the ground.

17:03And underneath this active layer of soil is the permafrost. And I can smell this amazing smell.

17:10I don't know where it's coming from, but it's one of these plants that's just wafting into the air.

17:15This is an amazing part of the world.

17:16So here I am on the Tuk Highway, which is in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region in Northwest Territories.

17:32It's an enormous road. It goes from Inuvik all the way to Tuktoyaktuk, which is about 145 kilometers.

17:39So here in this car, journeying with me, is Georgia, a researcher, and Max.

17:46Hello. Hi.

17:47And Borgi, over here.

17:49Hi.

17:50Max and Borgi are Amariuk Monitors, a team of indigenous researchers who keep watch on the environmental

17:58conditions of these lands and waterways, the lifeblood of their community.

18:05The stakes are high.

18:06So what started you on this journey of trying to collect and quantify this data?

18:15From my understanding, it's for the future.

18:18Like, it's for our future children, grandchildren, you know, people that's going to be here long past us, right?

18:25Since the road opened in 2017, they've been keeping close watch on highway flooding,

18:30especially during spring thaw.

18:32But now there's a new job that they never really signed up for.

18:37Flooding from beaver dams.

18:39A hunting way will go.

18:43A hunting way will go.

18:46Take 100 on this one, huh?

18:47Yeah.

18:49Last week we were here, Borgi, we had to take this apart.

18:52It wasn't this bad, but we did take it apart and it looked like you did a lot more work this time.

18:58Yeah.

18:58I think this beaver's starting to understand us.

19:02Yeah.

19:03Well, we're going to start pulling material out of the center of the creek so it can start flowing again.

19:08Okay.

19:09Okay.

19:16Oh, man, look at that.

19:18The water is four feet deep on the other side of the dam.

19:20The reason why we're having these problems in some areas of the road is the beaver pooling water,

19:36melting the permafrost and damaging the road, making obstacles to the road.

19:42Forky and Max try their best to keep the water flowing.

19:48But once they leave, the beavers come back to do their thing.

19:52Beavers may be newbies to the area, but they can see the signs that winters in the arctic come

19:57earlier and last longer than down south. So they're working overtime to gather food supplies

20:03and repair and rebuild their leaking dams.

20:06As far as any species on the planet that can mimic what beavers do, humans would be the species

20:17that comes closest. So humans and beavers are in competition for being able to build dams,

20:25create new structures and change landscapes.

20:28We came back here today, less than 24 hours later. And as you can see,

20:38this dam is completely repaired. So these animals work fast, they're efficient, they're strong.

20:45Holy man, look at that.

20:51Back and bigger than ever.

20:54It's like we didn't even do a thing.

20:59Beavers don't build dams to be a nuisance. For them, it's instinctual.

21:04Like this pet beaver, using anything she can find to build a dam in a hallway.

21:11Beavers are semi-aquatic. They're happy on land, but fastest in the water.

21:16Their ponds keep them safe from predators and they dig them deep enough to keep their winter

21:21cache of food available, even if the top of the pond freezes.

21:24They often construct canals. They can swim up the canals, grab their food, put it back into the

21:33canal and pull it back towards the lodge. So it increases territory, it increases foraging range,

21:39and it also can actually help focus water into that pond.

21:46New beaver ponds and canals keep appearing daily, and monitors like Josh Teddy and Lenny

21:52Imagiuk have to work hard to keep up.

21:56The beaver lodge is right here.

22:00They say there's the permafrost

22:04melted over there, and all the water gushed out.

22:08And we now have a drained lake.

22:10This is another thing happening more often in the north, ponds and lakes suddenly forming,

22:16or just as suddenly draining, as permafrost freezes or thaws with the seasons.

22:21The level of the water at one time was just at the bottom here of the beaver lodge,

22:27and the beaver lodge was actually in the water.

22:30Yeah.

22:30But now the beaver house is six feet above water level.

22:37All the way around, there was actually no mud bars, it was all water.

22:42Maybe it's not the beaver's fault.

22:44Yeah.

22:45The permafrost is right next to the beaver dam, and we still don't know.

22:51Maybe it's not the beaver, maybe it is.

22:54But we all know that when there's more water, it just melts the ice, melts the permafrost.

23:00So it's possible that the beaver did that, and it could be if climate changed too.

23:06So I'm sure this is not going to be the last leak this will happen to.

23:11Yeah.

23:12In our time.

23:13Yeah, for sure.

23:15As monitors, it's Josh and Lenny's job to document and report things like this.

23:22This is their home, and they know the land best.

23:26I'm from Taktoyaktuk.

23:27An elder in the community.

23:32I've been born and raised here.

23:35I've been a hunter, a harvester all my life.

23:42Growing up, my parents were reindeer herders.

23:44I remember crossing the lake and dog team with my own dog.

23:50You know, one sled, one little toboggan that might have been three or four years old.

23:56I could remember that quite well.

23:58Taktoyaktuk has now grown to more than 900 people.

24:06But one thing hasn't changed, their reliance on the land.

24:10Taktoyaktuk is a place where our people had picked in the past because of the fishing.

24:27It's important for us to show our respect to nature, to the ocean for what it provides us on a daily basis.

24:45The beluga, the herring, the whitefish that you're all harvesting to feed your family,

24:53your community throughout the cold winter.

25:01For many indigenous communities in the south,

25:04trapping for beaver meat and fur is a way of life.

25:08But for the people here in the ISR, not so much.

25:11When I was growing up, I never learned how to trap beaver because there are no beavers.

25:18The beavers just started coming to Taktoyaktuk in the past few years.

25:21Now they're plugging up our dam, interrupting our fishing.

25:26We never did ever see them before and now they're like everywhere.

25:29Folks here are not used to seeing beavers and many have been wondering,

25:36is this some sort of new winter resistant breed?

25:42There's one species of beaver no matter where you are in North America

25:45and that species of beaver is Castor canadensis, the North American beaver.

25:51They're not naive to really cold temperatures.

25:53We have them all the way from the Gulf of Mexico,

25:56all the way from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic coast and now all the way up to the Arctic coast.

26:01So as they go north, they are well adapted to deal with snow and ice.

26:06They can gather enough food in the fall and early winter in order to build their food caches.

26:11Because they don't hibernate, they stay active throughout the winter time

26:15and they have to eat as winter progresses.

26:19So they make sure that the pond is deep enough that it doesn't freeze to the bottom.

26:23They will leave their lodge, they'll swim down and get food from their food cache.

26:28And the lodges are really well built.

26:30The walls are quite thick and they're actually quite well insulated.

26:33And beaver lodges inside, even at minus 40 degrees Celsius, still can be above freezing.

26:39And a beaver is a large animal.

26:41But if you put six of those warm-blooded animals inside the lodge,

26:45you're going to have a little bit of extra heat that can help get them through the winters as well.

26:50The beaver is taking over this land.

26:54I mean, they've got to be one of the smartest little animals in the world, I think.

26:58Look at the area they live in.

26:59Look at the cold, dark, wet in the winter time.

27:03Just a little small furball.

27:05It seems they dominate every habitat they live in.

27:08I mean, they've taken over streams.

27:11They've taken over lakes.

27:13They've taken over rivers.

27:15Now we're seeing them in our Beaufort Sea.

27:17Seriously, in the ocean?

27:19In the ocean, yeah.

27:20I was there two weeks ago at Jingle Point and 2.30 in the morning, I'm standing outside

27:25and checking the boats and lo and behold, a beaver swims by.

27:29Come on.

27:31Beavers will swim in saltwater, but they won't permanently live in saltwater systems.

27:37They just use it as a means of getting to the next place they want to live.

27:42But they have to get that salt out of their fur fairly quickly in order to keep the

27:48waterproofness and buoyancy.

27:50If beavers are already making their way to the Beaufort Sea, how are they getting there?

27:56Research teams like this are working with the locals to gather evidence and to,

28:00well, keep a log.

28:03Lots of logs, in fact.

28:06So I'm with Georgia and she just took a wood sample with her saw.

28:10So this is the stump and there is the piece of wood.

28:13And I just asked her how many wood samples she has so far for her data collection.

28:18And what did you just tell me?

28:19860.

28:22That is pretty hardcore.

28:25Not bad, hey guys?

28:25Georgia finds out the age of these beaver bitten samples by counting the growth rings.

28:35That tells her when the beavers harvested the wood.

28:38Georgia, there's a really fresh cut here.

28:41Oh, great.

28:43That's a good indication that the beavers are here and maintaining the lodge and dam.

28:48And you can see here it's got that orangey tint,

28:50which helps show that it was very recent that the beaver cut this piece.

28:53Okay, so the orange is synonymous with fresh.

28:57Yeah, basically I think it just shows that the wood has just been freshly damaged.

29:01It hasn't had time to be weathered or bleached by the sun.

29:03Huh, okay.

29:04Wow, now it's so clear.

29:06I mean, that one over there looks like an old one, hey?

29:09Yeah, exactly.

29:10Yeah, see?

29:10Kind of turning greyish, weathered.

29:13So does that mean that these same beavers have been around here for a while?

29:16That's what I would say so, yeah.

29:17So it looks like they've certainly been here long enough to have been using material for multiple, multiple years.

29:23By comparing samples, Georgia can tell that beavers first started using this particular site in 2018.

29:29It's the tooth marks that tell the tale.

29:32They must be here right now maintaining the lodge and the dams because they're fresh cutting wood

29:37and using it on their lodge and in their cache of food as well.

29:40So you're saying someone's home right now?

29:41I think so.

29:42Beavers cut branches, shrubs and trees to use for building and the layers just under the bark

29:51for nutrition and they need a really sharp tool to do the job.

29:58Beavers are actually considered the second largest rodent in the world.

30:02They can extend up to 70 to 100 pounds.

30:06Their body is almost a meter long and they are just a tremendously big rodent.

30:14That name rodent comes from a Latin word that means to gnaw.

30:18And to do that, rodents need sharp teeth.

30:22Beavers have amazing front incisors.

30:24They are hard on the front, soft on the back.

30:27So every time a beaver takes a bite, it sharpens its incisors to chisel sharp.

30:33The other really interesting thing about these incisors is that they grow for life.

30:37So those ever-growing teeth allow these teeth to constantly be sharpened

30:44and then still be the same length that they need to be in order to have that perfect bite

30:49and what makes them so successful at cutting woody plants.

30:54Woody plants are much more abundant here now thanks to rising average temperatures.

30:59But small changes like this can have big consequences.

31:04Extreme weather events are on the increase worldwide.

31:08In Canada, annual wildfires have become the norm,

31:11but are now starting earlier and spreading farther, even up into the Arctic.

31:18A major factor is climate change, which accelerates as wildfires release greenhouse gases.

31:25Habitat for caribou and salmon is threatened,

31:29and that disrupts a way of life for everyone living here.

31:33In the south, beavers build new habitat everywhere they go.

31:37Will they have the same effect here in the north?

31:43To find out, researchers from around the globe are converging on the ISR.

31:47They're enlisting the help of locals like the Amariuk monitors to help find answers.

31:52I guess you could say we're the teachers.

31:57They were quite interested in knowing what we know and how we deal with it.

32:01This is one of the ways that we have to deal with it and adapt and try to learn.

32:06So we are here in the Inuvialuit settlement region, the ISR,

32:20and we are on our way to go look at a drained lake.

32:23And the curious thing is, we don't know why it's drained.

32:26It was pretty dramatic, actually.

32:28It went from being a pretty full lake to being near empty.

32:31So I am walking through a beaver canal right now, and you can see behind me, side to side,

32:43how deep and wide this canal is.

32:47So beavers create these canals to travel through, to transport their shrubs from one place to another.

32:53And the reason I'm able to walk through this canal is because I'm standing at the bottom of a drained lake.

33:00The first time we've seen the lake drainage and the way we kind of found out about this was Lenny and Josh pointing it out.

33:07The Amariuk monitors are now working with teams of researchers from abroad.

33:15Ecologist Helen Wheeler came here from England to learn about the impacts of beavers on both the ecosystems

33:22and the Indigenous communities.

33:27We work closely with Helen.

33:29I got a lot of respect for her, for what she does for our people and our land.

33:34She's very respectful to us and our people, and she's always open to learning.

33:42This is where the beaver enters its lodge.

33:46Oh, neat!

33:47Usually it would be submerged underwater.

33:49So this is the front entrance?

33:51Yes, it is.

33:52So you've got a kind of chamber up here, and that's where they'll have the kits and have the young,

33:57and that'll be a bit more open and roomy.

33:59So they come up, and then above water you've got this chamber.

34:01What do you mean? There's like an upstairs and a downstairs?

34:03Well, an entrance and then a chamber above.

34:06This is like a whole village!

34:10Helen studied at universities in Alberta and Quebec,

34:14where she was first introduced to communities in the north.

34:18I've kind of been studying Indigenous knowledge for about seven years.

34:20I got kind of interested in how we do better co-production,

34:25how we work better together with Indigenous peoples to do often scientific research.

34:29She was actually the one to take us to the UK.

34:34Borgie and I went down to Cambridge, did a presentation there.

34:40In 2023, Max and Borgie represented the ISR at an international conference about beavers in the Arctic.

34:47We mustn't forget that there's a richness to Indigenous knowledge.

34:52The more diverse ways of sharing knowledge we have, the better, really.

34:57The beaver is at the center of this unique co-production of knowledge.

35:01It was, of course, also the beaver that was at the center of some of the earliest relationships

35:07between Europeans and Indigenous peoples.

35:11Business relationships, that is.

35:15Back in the 1600s, European traders were shocked to see that there were

35:19tens of millions of beavers in North America.

35:23The fur fetched big money back home for making fashionable felt hats.

35:27And so the rush was on.

35:29Beavers were trapped, skinned, and driven nearly to extinction.

35:35By the time it became the official symbol of Canada,

35:38the only reliable place to see a beaver was on a coin or a postage stamp.

35:45But as Joni Mitchell once said,

35:47you don't know what you've got till it's gone.

35:49People realized that there were no beavers around anymore,

35:53and that beavers and water went together.

35:55And so we started getting more and more projects where beavers were being brought back

36:01in hopes that they would help restore some of the aquatic systems.

36:05The plane makes a careful approach, ready for the drop.

36:09There's archival footage of beavers being parachuted into northern Idaho

36:13from about just after the Second World War.

36:16So what they would do is fly these beavers over the valley,

36:20throw them out with the parachutes,

36:22and then drop them into areas where they wanted beavers to repopulate.

36:27He's on his way now.

36:29His nose and his instinct tell him where to find the water.

36:32And so that was one of the ways that we had people bringing beavers back to the landscape

36:37after they'd been almost completely wiped out by the fur trade.

36:40When beavers change landscapes, it's not necessarily welcomed by humans.

36:46Beavers can be a nuisance when dropped into populated areas, but in the wild, they can be a blessing.

36:57When beavers move into dense woodland, they clear out trees, let in sunlight, and dam streams.

37:03The beaver ponds attract new plants, insects, and wildlife.

37:09They provide protection against drought and wildfire.

37:12Once the beavers move on, the dam breaks and drains, leaving behind fertile sediment, lush meadows, and grasslands.

37:21It's a cycle that has been repeated for centuries across North America, especially in the south.

37:29We know that in southern systems, beavers do create higher biodiversity in their ponds.

37:35The ponds themselves support more species.

37:39But the Arctic is vast, and we just don't know how beavers coming into, let's say, Nunavik,

37:47in northern Quebec, will respawn to that landscape versus beavers coming into areas around Tuktuk.

37:56When you put them into a new landscape, such as the tundra, we are in a land, in science,

38:04that is really uncharted territory.

38:09I think seeing beavers exploit new habitat and new environment, scientifically super interesting,

38:15but at the same time, this rapid transformation from going from sort of a timeless Arctic,

38:20to this very dynamic Arctic, is concerning, I would say.

38:33The Arctic had been frozen in time for more than two and a half million years.

38:38But in the latter part of the 20th century, things started to change, fast.

38:45And when a northward migration of beavers got so big, you could see it from space.

38:51That's when the questions started.

38:54What compelled them to travel further north into this harsh climate?

38:59If anyone has answers to beaver questions, it's environmental scientist, Glynis Hood.

39:04She wrote the book, The Beaver Manifesto.

39:09Why wouldn't they stay down further south, where the climate's better?

39:12Well, because animals respond to their environment, and our environment's changing.

39:16The Arctic is warming, shrubs are there, and beavers are what we call density dependent.

39:21So what happens is, if the animal's population gets so dense, that there's not a lot of extra resources,

39:28the birth rates go down, and mortality rates go up. So go north, young beaver, and exploit new habitats

39:34that otherwise don't have any competition in them.

39:37We never had this many beavers before. Maybe they're at their peak, now maybe they'll start

39:43disappearing. It's hard to say, I think they're here to stay.

39:46It is hard to say, most likely they are here to stay.

39:50People adapt to a lot of things, and I think we just change it, go along with it, yeah.

39:58I don't feel good about dealing with beavers, but they're here.

40:09We adapt with the seasons, you know, we do, and I think all the animals that are around here,

40:18including the beaver, now we're going to have to adapt to it.

40:21If you got rid of all the beavers in the Arctic today, more beavers would move north.

40:31When a beaver comes to visit, you know what's there.

40:34You know, before I studied shrubs, and shrubs are interesting, but yeah, it's a privilege to be out

40:41here observing these animals, and I think they're just very human-like.

40:49Very few species out there impart their own set of changes on the landscape. Humans are one of them,

40:57but beavers have a lot of similarities with humans in that they're building dams, flooding things,

41:04really changing the landscape in such a profound way that we can see it from space.

41:11They are remarkable engineers, and they've been doing it since the last ice age,

41:16and they have just shaped the entire environments in which we live.

41:21They actively are changing the environment around them to suit themselves. In some ways,

41:26I'm really in awe of what they're doing.

41:35I think beavers moving to the Arctic is such a compelling story because it weaves in the idea of

41:42climate change. It weaves in the essential nature of indigenous cultures in northern environments,

41:49and how they are adapting. The Arctic story in the next 30 years involves a lot of the

41:56effects of climate change on the landscape. Beavers are a big part of it.

42:02So in 10 years from now, what do you think the Arctic will look like?

42:07More beavers. More beavers. More beavers, which means more ponds. More ponds.

42:12More ponds. Well, this is very pleasant down by the river.

42:20So do you think we'll see a beaver? You could try calling one.

42:23Calling one? Yeah, you could try calling a beaver.

42:26How do you call a beaver? You want to learn?

42:28Yes, I want to learn. Okay.

42:31Okay. So you keep your mouth closed, and you just use your nose. All right? And you're going to go.

42:47Try it.

42:57Beaver's in the morning, beaver's in the evening, beaver's in the afternoon.

43:06Swimming downstream, building their dreams, managing the putty lagoon.

43:13One stick, two stick, red stick, blue stick, for you know it, everything's down.

43:19You'll be soaking wet, because the beaver ain't a pet. They're engineers, and you'll say that's a plan.

43:27You'll be soaking wet, because the beaver ain't a pet. They're engineers, and you'll say that's a plan.

43:40All their siblings, all their cousins, all the tundra be damned.

43:49You'll be soaking wet, because the beaver ain't a pet. They're engineers, and you'll say that's a plan.

43:55You'll be soaking wet, because the beaver ain't a pet. They're engineers, and you'll say that's our plan.

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