Ecosystem engineers in the wrong place: a bi-national approach to restoration of austral ecosystem by beaver removal

SAAVEDRA, B; SOTO, N; MENVIELLE, F; ADRIAN CARLOS MIGUEL SCHIAVINI; MALMIERCA L,; RAMADORI, D

Porth Elizabeth

Congreso; 21st Annual Meeting Society for Conservation Biology; 2007

Canadian beavers were introduced to Tierra del Fuego in 1946. Since then the original 25 pairs has expanded to approximately 100,000 individuals in both Argentina and Chile. Now beavers occupy almost the entire Fueguian Archipelago, and individuals have reached the continent.  As ecosystem engineers, beavers have affected several levels of native biodiversity, jeopardizing local and global ecological, social and economical processes.  They have become a major factor in native forest destruction. Control techniques developed by both Argentine and Chilean governments were based on the use of economic incentives to promote beaver capture.  Results have varied in timing, trapping effort and spatial scale and have failed to reduce beaver population and prevent beavers from beginning to invade the continent. Faced with the impending ecological disaster that would follow  the expansion of beavers onto continental South America, local governments from Chile and Argentina, convened two International workshops, after which a Bi-National Strategy for Beaver Eradication was agreed upon, and explicit commitment for working on restoration of Southern Patagonia through a large scale, bi-national level beaver eradication program was explicitly taken Including a vision, goal, and objective , This project will become a model for addressing a global threat to biodiversity, based on a bi-national effort, public-private initiative, developed from Tierra del Fuego..