Show Navigation

Kevin Moloney Photography

  • Portfolio
  • Archive
    • All Galleries
    • Search
    • Cart
    • Lightbox
    • Client Area
  • Instagram
  • Transmedia Journalism
  • About
  • Contact
Seven Plagues of Tierra del Fuego All Galleries
Add to Cart Download

2. Invasive Species

15 images Created 23 Jul 2014

View: 100 | All

Loading ()...

  • With a naturally small variety of wildlife, Tierra del Fuego is overrun with exotic species, the most notorious of which is the Canadian beaver. Nearly twice as many introduced species of mammals inhabit the region as natives -- including the dogs, cats, rats, mice, horses, cows and sheep that come along with human settlement. Among all of those, too, there are wild examples roaming the hills and forests of the islands. For the 10 native mammal species, there are 19 invaders competing in their environment.
    01Cover.jpg
  • The beaver was introduced to Tierra del Fuego along with the muskrat in 1946 in hopes of spurring a fur industry. Free of the bears and wolves that check their numbers in North America, the original 50 Canadian beavers have exploded to an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 on the Argentine half of the main island of Tierra del Fuego. Tens of thousands more cruise the waterways of the Chilean side.
    02Road.jpg
  • By flooding river channels, washing out roads and cutting forested land, the beaver is the most visually damaging of Tierra del Fuego's invaders. They certainly catch the greatest institutional attention. The beavers, says researcher Julio Escobar, "have a visual impact that the politicians can see."
    03Fireland.jpg
  • In an act that will earn a death penalty from park rangers, a beaver builds a quick dam in a culvert along Tierra del Fuego National Park's main road. Fencing, like that seen above, has reduced damage to the park road by beavers, but the crafty engineers will still seize any easy opportunity to create a pond for their dens. By blocking road culverts or flooding nearby waterways, beavers inundate many of the island's back roads.
    04Culvert.jpg
  • Though a natural part of the North American ecosystem, the busy rodents have eagerly inhabited 90 percent of the island's river systems, causing probably permanent damage to trout spawning creeks, river drainages, water quality and the habitats along the edge of Tierra del Fuego's once-clear mountain streams.
    05Lunch2.jpg
  • Ranger Pablo Kunzle wades into the pond behind a beaver dam in Tierra del Fuego National Park, planting a trap for one of four beavers he believes lives nearby. "In terms of the public this is a difficult thing to explain," he laments. "They are cute, sweet little critters. Children watch them on cartoons. People love them."
    06Trapping3.jpg
  • Park ranger Pablo Kunzle drags a trapped adolescent beaver to the shore. Suspecting that beavers were active here, Kunzle had come weeks earlier and ripped a small leak in the dam with an ice axe. It had been repaired, proving to him that the colony was active.
    07Quarry.jpg
  • Kunzle beheads the trapped beaver. The animal's head will be sent to a local research center where age and sex will be registered. "It's impossible to exterminate them, so all we can do is try to control them," he says.
    08Beheaded.jpg
  • "These beavers are tough," Kunzle says with admiration. "They are beautiful animals."
    09Tail.jpg
  • Hunter Juan Rivero displays one of hundreds of pelts he claims to have waiting for market. In 1998, the Argentine provincial government bought 1,100 Canadian-designed traps to loan to ranchers, hunters, researchers and the national park. They provided training for prospective hunters on trap use and preparation of the pelts. The hunting season was extended to the full year in hopes of inspiring the locals to trap the animals and sell the furs according to the 1946 plan. But economics and world politics create more problems for the Fuegian dream of beaver control. "There's no demand for furs," says Nora Loekemeyer of the provincial natural resources office in Ushuaia. "The price is only $10, and they can't be exported to the EU."
    10Rivero.jpg
  • The gray fox, a native of mainland Patagonia, was brought to Tierra del Fuego in the 1950s in hopes of putting the brakes on a scourge of rabbits introduced on the Chilean side of the island in the 1930s. Today the foxes roam in force the steppe of the island's north, and are rapidly pushing Tierra del Fuego's larger native red foxes out of prime habitat in southern forests.
    11ZorroG.jpg
  • Once Tierra del Fuego's largest land predator, the Fuegian red fox is under severe pressure from invasive mainland foxes and feral dogs.
    12ZorroC.jpg
  • A pair of beavers dines along the shore of a small Fuegian lake. Among the 19 invading mammal species, the beaver is still considered the worst. All that separates the beaver from invading the mainland of South America is the Strait of Magellan, across which watch the fearful eyes of Chile and Argentina in hopes that they won't succeed. A spread of the industrious rodents up the Andean range would spell equal disaster for river systems there.
    13Pair.jpg
  • Tree-felling is perhaps the beaver's greatest public relations problem, as residents, tourists, politicians and loggers all gaze in wonder on the ghosts of beech trees that stand in every river valley, victims of the flooding caused by the beaver dams. Gnawed stumps of smaller trees ring their habitat, giving the beaver a voracious reputation.
    14Damage.jpg
  • Ranger Pablo Kunzle stands atop a beaver den in a pond along the Río Pipo in Tierra del Fuego National Park. Dead beech trees stand in the flood water. "Every change is good for some and bad for others," he muses. "The ducks that need clear, rapid-running water are suffering. It's good for those ducks that eat algae from dark, still water. They (the beavers) changed the oxygen level of the rivers."
    15BigPond.jpg