March of the Beaver

Overheard at National Geographic

National Geographic

Science, Society & Culture

4.5 • 10.1K Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2019

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The desolate Alaskan tundra - a landscape that has literally been frozen solid for thousands of years - is suddenly caving in on itself. Colonizing beavers are engineering new wetlands that thaw the soil, rapidly releasing greenhouse methane into the atmosphere. Beavers can survive in the arctic because - like people - they change the environment to make homes for themselves, and their carbon footprint can be seen from space. For more information on this episode, visit nationalgeographic.com/overheard Want More? Permafrost covers an area more than twice the size of the United States. Read about why it's thawing faster than we expected. There are drunken trees in forests across Alaska, Canada and northern Eurasia. Check out pictures of some drunken forests. Ben Goldfarb believes that beavers aren't only not to blame for climate change, they're actually helping fight against it. Also explore: Not only is methane a greenhouse gas, it's also flammable. Watch Katey Walter Anthony set frozen lakes on fire. Ever wonder why beavers make such great hats? And why they eventually went out of style? Wonder no more. If you like what you hear and want to support more content like this, please consider a National Geographic subscription. Go to natgeo.com/exploremore to subscribe today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	A lot of people when they think Arctic, they think flat,
0:03.6	tundra, endless, you could see forever,
0:06.0	and there's no landscape to speak of.
0:08.6	Craig Welch writes about the environment
0:10.2	for National Geographic,
0:11.4	and he would like to change your mental picture
0:13.6	of the Arctic.
0:14.8	You're in basically this amazingly beautiful Alpine system.
0:19.8	And there's like tall shrubs,
0:21.8	and they were grizzly bear tracks everywhere.
0:24.5	We actually got to see a wolf chase some caribou
0:28.1	up the river drainage,
0:29.2	and then like a half an hour later,
0:30.6	the wolf came back alone, clearly hadn't caught
0:32.8	what he was after.
0:34.5	It's a really stunning place,
0:36.3	and it does not look like what you might imagine
0:39.1	the Arctic to look like,
0:40.3	but the Arctic encompasses all sorts of landscapes.
0:43.5	Craig says another thing about the Arctic
0:46.0	is that it's not as cold as it used to be,
0:48.8	which means it's becoming prime real estate
	...

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