{"id":649737,"date":"2026-05-05T17:14:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T17:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/649737\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T17:14:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T17:14:12","slug":"theyre-everywhere-growing-population-of-beavers-affecting-traditional-lands-in-arctic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/649737\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018They\u2019re everywhere\u2019: Growing population of beavers affecting traditional lands in Arctic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Text<\/p>\n

Listen to this article<\/p>\n

Estimated 4 minutes<\/p>\n

The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.<\/p>\n

Growing up, Kevin Arey says it used to be a \u201ctreat\u201d seeing beavers in the Inuvialuit region. Now, not so much.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey’re everywhere,\u201d he said. \u201cYou see too many of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arey is an Imaryuk Monitor, a member of a community guardian program whose job is to protect wildlife and land along the N.W.T.’s Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk Highway.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He says the beaver population in the area has been steadily growing and he\u2019s even seen one in salt water \u2014 something uncommon for the typically freshwater creatures.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never seen a beaver before like that swim in the harbour in Shingle Point in my life. So, that was a first for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arey said the beavers and the dams they make are affecting and changing traditional travelling routes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we do for a living, our fishing, our hunting, it’s making obstructions, moving water, making the rivers act differently,\u201d he said. \u201cWe live this, we’re here, we do this traveling on the land. We live it, we see it, it’s noticeable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"BeaverA drone shot of researchers at a beaver lodge site in the North. (Submitted by Georgia Hole)Beaver expansion reflected in data<\/p>\n

This reality that Arey sees every day is now reflected in a new study in the journal Ecosphere <\/a>that shows new evidence for beaver expansion in the Arctic as early as 2008 using satellite imaging and studying vegetation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Helen Wheeler, the senior author of the study, says there are several reasons why beavers are finding a home in the Arctic including climate change and shrubification, which is an increase in woody canopy-forming shrubs that beavers use to build dams.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wheeler says examining shrub rings is helpful because, like tree rings, they can help researchers see and date when beavers were in the region.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“To kind of get a window into the past, in terms of when were beavers at this location? Were they permanently there or were they just there on and off?” Wheeler said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Shrubs\"Researchers analyze shrub rings, like tree rings, to see when beavers were in the region. (Submitted by Helen Wheeler)<\/p>\n

The study also looked at and compared satellite imaging of surface water year to year to see if there were any abrupt changes that indicated beavers had created dams and affected waterways.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBeavers backing up a lake or creating an increase in the amount of water that’s holding back with the dam,” Wheeler said. “This can actually be viewed from satellites.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She says beaver dams can block important waterways for travel and cause impacts to permafrost which could contribute to lake drainage. She says community members also talk about dams creating overflow, which is when there is water on top of the ice, and how that causes problems for travelling.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"PeopleHelen Wheeler and other researchers learning about important locations from the Tuktoyaktuk Hunters & Trappers Committee. (Submitted by Georgia Hole)<\/p>\n

Arey says the beaver population is growing in the region because very few people hunt or trap the animals, or use the fur in any way.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s not feasible for people to go and trap and hunt these things because there’s no market for it. It’s not worth the time and money to utilize beaver,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Arey says the growing beaver population is an issue that needs to be addressed and data collection can help inform solutions.\u00a0But he says he\u2019d like to see the Inuvialuit Settlement Area and the Gwich’in Settlement Area work together to preserve traditional lands for the next generation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could collect data for ever and ever and ever, but collecting data does not change or fix our problem, right?\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem needs to be addressed, needs to be taken seriously by all sides, and we need to work together to try to find and build off of what we have for information and data gathering.\u201d <\/p>\n

LISTEN | Beavers in the Arctic are becoming a problem:<\/p>\n

The Trailbreaker10:04Beavers in the Arctic are becoming a problem<\/p>\n

Kevin Arey is a director with the\u00a0Inuvik Hunter and Trappers Committeeand an Imaryuk Monitor, and Helen Wheeler is a\u00a0professor and researcher based at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England. They are researching the migration of beavers into the Inuvialuit Settlement Region. They both joined Shannon Scott to talk about how that’s impacting local ecosystems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-649737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}