It was a matter of time. In 2005 and while studying the European mink on the banks of the Aragón River, biologist Juan Carlos Ceña realized that something didn’t fit. There were felled trees, remains of forage, footprints, burrows and very specific droppings: it was just what one would expect to find in the vicinity of a beaver community.
But there were no beavers in Spain. Everyone knew that.
The strange story of the Iberian beavers. For years, researchers have debated whether the last specimens disappeared in the 17th century, the 18th century, or even the 19th century. In the end, the consensus is that the only evidence available They place them in the 2nd century BC. After that moment, no one knows what happened to the peninsula’s beavers.
Therefore, what Ceña had just discovered was a bombshell. But, as soon as they started investigating it, they realized that there was a lot of fabric to cut. Sometime in the spring of 2003, someone illegally introduced 18 European beavers from Bavaria. Nobody knows for sure who he was or why he did it.
But we know that it continued to be done. Today, there are beavers in the Tagus and the Guadalquivir. And of course we know that your beaver expansion it’s not natural. In 2023, biologist Teresa Calderón calculation that the Tormes beavers would have taken 40 years to get there by their own means from the closest documented population.
The Andalusian case is more bloody: there is no way for the beavers to travel on their own the 365 kilometers of southern subplateau between the stretch of the Guadalquivir where they were found in 2023 and the closest point where we had previously found them.
The ‘beaver bombing’ was a reality. But the worst was not (only) that: the worst was that, once they reached a river, they were there to stay. As soon as they took root in an area, they did not abandon it: if in 2007 they had already ‘conquered’ 60 kilometers of riverbank, by 2023 the beavers were already in Mequinenza and the lower stretch of the Ebro.
It was a matter of time before they arrived in Catalonia and the news is that they have already arrived. The Center for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications has confirmed the presence of the beaver in the Segrià region, in the province of Lleida.
Good news. And I’m not talking about the expansion of the beaver. That, today, is neither good nor bad news. It just is. I’m talking about, according to a handful of recent articles, “Beavers can turn river corridors into permanent carbon sinks“That is, they can be a climate ally that helps us recharge aquifers, purify water naturally and help in the recovery of wetlands.
It is the ecological version of the old Castilian saying that “when God closes a door, he opens a window.” And thank goodness, because invasive species are here and we will not be able to get rid of them.
Image | Derek Otway
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