INVASIVE SPECIES:PART II

The fur industry seems to lack foresight.  In part I, I wrote that in France the breeding of the ragondin, an Argentine-born rodent for its fur ended in fiasco in the 1930s.  Absurdly, in the next decade, the Argentinians repeated this mistake, and introduced the Canadian beaver to Patagonia.  As in France, the Argentine fur business did not flourish.  As a result, Argentina and neighboring Chile are now trying to eradicate some 100,000 beavers that are destroying native forests.  For its part, France is at loss to eradicate a ragondin population estimated at 400,000.

In 1946, 25 pairs of Canadian beavers were imported to Tierra del Fuego, a large island at the southern tip of Patagonia shared by Argentina and Chile. The beaver population expanded rapidly and got out of control; unlike in their homeland, they have no predators in Tierra del Fuego.  Building dams and chomping trees, the busy rodents are wreaking havoc on the environment.  Confronted with the challenge, some people have recommended actions as outlandish and as unworkable as trapping the critters and shipping them back to Canada.  Other have suggested introducing top predators like pumas.  Pumas are residents of Patagonia but never crossed into Tierra del Fuego.  Just as well, otherwise the local Magellan penguins would have been decimated, being easier prey than the aquatic beavers.


So far, the standard eradication policy has been to offer rewards to kill the invaders.  Not only have these actions failed to dent the beaver population, but they are bringing back infamous memories.  During the late 19^th century, European colonizers were actually rewarded to kill the native Indians of the island.  The Ona Indians were semi-nomadic hunter- gathers who had lived for thousand years in the Tierra del Fuego archipelago.  Their way of life was considered an obstacle to the commercial exploitation of the area; sheep breeders, gold miners, sealers and fortune seekers shot the Indians with the blessing of the Chilean and Argentine governments.  Commercial farmers set up militia to hunt the Indians.  A bounty was paid upon the presentation of a pair of hands, ears, breast or complete skulls.  Apparently, women body parts were more valuable than those of men.  

                                                       Ona People


Colonizers displayed boundless imagination to exterminate the Indians.  It was reported that they poisoned the blubber of beached whales, a staple Indian food.  The Onas who managed to escape gun shots died of alcoholism, diseases or famine.  Many others were deported or sent to Christian missions.  When the white men landed on the archipelago, the Ona population (also called Selk’nam) was around 7,000, in 1910 it had been reduced by 90%.  The last full-blood Ona died in 1974[1].

This little publicized genocide is an increasingly touchy subject in Chile and Argentina. No wonder that the beaver bounty system does not attract many hunters.  According to a recent BBC documentary, Canadian beavers have devastated an area the size of Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, and it is confirmed that the local ecosystem cannot recover from the onslaught.  Until the Chilean and Argentinian governments get their joint eradication policy up to speed, the intrusive and destructive beavers will continue their chain-saw like activities.  They have become tourist attraction.  For many years to come, the beaver and its cousin the ragondin will go about their business unworriedly in their respective adopted countries.  It is ironical to note that the solution to this ecological disaster may be the revival of the fur business.  PETA may not approve!

---

[1] The Chilean film Pearl Button (2015) by Patricio Gusmán chronicles the genocide and links it to Pinochet’s atrocities.