North American beavers in south-central Alaska. New research is supporting local observations of increased beaver presence in the Far North.Ken Tape/Supplied
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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.
Today, we’re looking at the Arctic migration of a famous boreal rodent and the change the animals are bringing with them.
Note: There will be no newsletter on Monday, May 18 as the team takes a break for Victoria Day. However, our website will be staffed throughout the long weekend so please visit us online at globeandmail.com. We’ll be back in your inbox on May 25. Enjoy your long weekend.
Now, let’s catch you up on other news.
Noteworthy reporting this week:
- Weather: Wildfire season already affecting B.C. and Alberta
- Wildfires: New push to set national standards for wildland firefighting protective equipment
- Resources: Fertilizer shortages and rising fuel prices could trigger food crisis across Asia
- Ecojustice: Community leaders ask judge to overturn B.C. regulator’s support for $12-billion pipeline plan
- Oil and gas: Ottawa suggests letting cabinet green-light pipelines before technical assessments happen
- Regulations: Rhino rancher seeks South African court’s approval to export 479 rhino horns to Canada
- Arts: Six environmental artists win this year’s Rewilding Art Prize
A deeper dive
A North American beaver swimming in the Beaufort Sea in July, 2024, near Shingle Point on the Yukon coast. It's unusual to see the freshwater, semi-aquatic mammals in saltwater, but research shows they are moving into the area in greater numbers.Kevin Arey/Supplied
Northward bound
For this week’s deeper dive, the spotlight is on beavers and their transformative migration into Canada’s Far North.
The signs were unmistakable: gnaw marks on trees and shrubs, rapid and lasting change to local waterways. And of course, numerous sightings of the semi-aquatic mammals who typically live in warmer climates.
Inuvialuit communities have long witnessed beavers moving into the Far North in rapidly growing numbers. Now, research published in the journal Ecosphere is supporting those observations.
Jenn Thornhill Verma’s feature on the famous rodents’ northward migration details how researchers traced their path and how the critters have transformed the landscape.
The beavers’ journey was driven by climate change, the study found, and they’ve travelled as far as the Arctic Ocean in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, or ISR – the westernmost region of Inuit Nunangat.
Almost a decade ago, residents of lower Mackenzie Delta communities started raising concerns about the impact the influx of beavers was having on their fishing and travel routes, and on drinking-water quality. By 2020, people described seeing beavers in almost every waterway in the area.
A few years later, the animals had been sighted by the Beaufort Sea. One man, a local resident who was part of the research team, described being stunned when he saw a beaver swimming in the ocean off the coast of Yukon.
To trace the beavers’ path, researchers worked with local community members to survey 60 beaver lodge and dam sites along a 130-kilometre stretch of the Inuvik–Tuktoyaktuk Highway.
The work used tree-ring analysis, examining gnaw marks in shrubs, combined with satellite imagery of changes to surface water from beaver dams.
Beaver-chewed wood on the Baldwin Peninsula, Alaska, in August, 2025.Tom Glass/Supplied
They compared the gnaw marks on willow and alder shrubs against growth rings of undisturbed shrubs to date the beaver activity. Through that comparison, they found evidence of continuous beaver presence in the region from at least 2008, as far north as the tip of the Northwest Territories.
The migration has been picking up its pace, the study found. Satellite imagery and gnaw marks near one large lodge-dam complex showed a significant increase in beaver activity between 2015 and 2019.
It’s part of a larger trend of boreal species migrating into the Arctic as the climate warms. Moose, snowshoe hare, river otter and muskrat have also pushed further north in recent years.
But according to the lead researcher on the study, beavers leave uniquely visible traces of their activity and the ecological change they bring about.
“Beavers effectively write their history into the landscape with each shrub they cut and every pond they create,” Georgia Hole of Durham University said in a news release about the findings.
Beavers’ activity can also accelerate climate change by creating flooding in lowlands and warming the ground in permafrost areas.
For local people, the change the animals have brought about means their historic way of life – their ability to hunt, fish and read the landscape – is at stake.
What else you missed
- Sea-Doo rider hurt after colliding with whale in Vancouver
- Trees counter half the world’s urban heating, but not where it’s needed most, study finds
- B.C. rock climber Will Stanhope conquered the hardest alpine-crack ascent in the world
- In New Zealand’s Wellington, residents campaign to return kiwi birds after century-long absence
- David Attenborough, British naturalist and veteran broadcaster, turns 100
- Taiwan’s plastic producers scramble for supplies as war in Iran disrupts imports
Opinion and analysis
Heat waves are invisible. But we need to see them for what they are
We can strip heat waves of their invisibility by understanding the crucial difference between record-breaking and record-shattering heat, and by seeing how they affect water – our most valuable resource, and one of the most visible, too.
— Sam Anderson is writing a book about climate extremes in Western North America
Business and investing
Vancouver company gets $1-million to test anti-wildfire cloud-seeding technology in B.C.
A Vancouver-based company has been awarded up to $1-million to test cloud-seeding technology in British Columbia this summer that could reduce lightning strikes that spark devastating wildfires.
Lightning caused 70 per cent of B.C. wildfires in 2024, accounting for more than 97 per cent of the roughly 1.1 million hectares that burned. Skyward Wildfire says it can help stop those fires before they even happen, by reducing the lightning that causes them. The company has been quietly testing its cloud-seeding technology for the past two years and has raised millions of dollars in funding.
Photo of the week
Dead fish lie on the dry bed of Two Buttes Reservoir on Sunday in Springfield, Colo. Colorado Parks and Wildlife attempted to rescue fish from the reservoir, normally a 25-feet deep, 700-acre body of water, before it dried completely during the worst drought in the state's history.Mark Makela/Getty Images
Guides and Explainers
- We’ve rounded up our reporters’ content to help you learn about what a carbon tax is, what happened at COP30 and just generally how Canada will change because of climate change.
- We have ideas to make your travelling more sustainable, your lifestyle at home more ecofriendly, and to talk to your kids about climate change.
- In a series of essays from writers exploring the role The Globe and Mail has played in Canada’s history,A Nation’s Paperalso highlights the journey of the newspaper’s green evolution.
Catch up on Globe Climate
- The Caribou Keepers
- Wildfire reflection and protection
- A fiery debate over dead trees
- Growing your own food