Keystone Victim-The Beavers

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Recommended: Native Americans: Cultures and Conflicts

The US is well known for its most used, honed, and practiced problem solving skill: eradication. Though there are many examples of this practice, some of the most well known include the Native Americans that were drug off their land or shot, the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that were subject to the atomic bomb in order to “bring the war to a speedy end,” or the Florida panthers that lost their habitat to urbanization. Whether human or animal that are hunted, Americans are very experienced at leaving a wake of destruction behind their path to progress. Yet another of these horror stories is currently taking place in the ecosystems of North America, this time involving a new victim -- the beaver. Beavers, like Native Americans and red wolves, are in need of land that is also needed by humans. Although at first glance, it may appear that only one side can win control of the land, there is good news. This news comes from a lesson that most people learn as toddlers and it is the idea of compromise and sharing. Rather than waging a war with beavers, as has …show more content…

R.T. Paine was an ecologist who created this term to identify species that have a significant impact when removed from an ecosystem. The term “keystone” is used to compare the very crucial species to the middle stone that keeps an archway from collapsing. Beavers have been named this because their dams create a habitat that is crucial for many different species of wildlife (“Beavers and the Environment”). The State University of New York at Cortland has done research on the natural processes of a beaver pond and published their findings in a report, where they described this unique habitat that is created, writing, “As once-dry meadow and forest habitats become flooded, living conditions rapidly change, causing previously dominant species to succumb as populations of better adapted organisms establish (“The Ecological Importance of

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