Beaver Dams. They’re amazing feats of engineering. But not in a foreign environment.
Like Australia, Argentina hasn’t learnt the lesson of not deliberately introducing animals from other continents that might cause an environmental problem.
Check out the photo below – it’s of a Beaver Dam. It looks like any other Beaver Dam within North America. However, this Beaver Dam is located in the Tierra del Fuego region of Argentina, right at the southernmost tip of South America, in a National Park!
However, Beavers are a North American species!
Beavers were brought to Tierra del Fuego as a potential source of income via their pelts, but, with no predators and no competition, had become completely feral.
This was probably because most people preferred buying a leather jacket made from high quality bovine carcass caused by Argentina’s meat addiction (See Don’t Cry For Meat Argentina), than one made from a somewhat-unmarketable feral Beaver.
Hence, the Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego inherited a large network of Beaver Dams. Whilst Beaver Dams are an impressive natural engineering feat of stick inter-twining from the animal kingdom, the Beavers had successfully drowned large areas of trees resulting in a juxtaposition of lush green, wind-blown sub-Antarctic vegetation, dissected by relatively barren lakes of foliage-free tree stumps.
So, these ecological stuff ups are pretty universal then!
You can learn more about how Beavers build their damns from this Discovery Channel Feature – Beavers: Dam It All Anyway.
Other things to do in Argentina – check out the tarnished reputation of their banks, which is worse than those of US banks in this current Global Finanical Crisis.
One day, I hope to see Beaver Dams in their natural environment in North America.
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June 4th, 2009 at 2:18 am
Hah! Beavers are so crazy. I never thought they would be at the Southern most tip of the Americas.
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June 17th, 2009 at 7:19 am
Haha, that’s pretty amazing. Especially since they are at the very southernmost point of South America. I’ve never heard of that before even though I love South America and have my own South America Travel blog.
Great site!
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anthony Reply:
June 17th, 2009 at 8:03 am
Hi Paul, thanks for the comment. Yes, I was quite surprised to see Beaver Dams in South America – impressive, but tragic at the same time!
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June 26th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
i wish you visit this place one day! seems interesting.. added you too in BC..thanks for the add!
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June 26th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
you seems to travel a lot! How I wish I could also! very interesting places here!
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Twitter: alicet homson
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December 18th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
The pictures of info of this spot looks AMAZING, I would really like to go there. How long should I plan my travel in order to see more or less all the touristy spots there?
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January 27th, 2010 at 7:31 pm
Beavers are such clever animals and it would be great to see how intricate and genius these dams are.
It’s very surprising to hear that the photo was taken in South America as I too thought that the beaver’s habitat was restricted to North America.
It just goes to show what an incredible animal the beaver is and thank you to Anthony for another great article.
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