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24 November 2012

Crummy Old Wine Dept.: Beware the beavers! Cuidado los castores de Sudamerica!

 Click to enlarge.

As is the universal custom of blotter art, artist unknown. (One blotter artist was prosecuted -- no evidence he ever had any LSD, he was just prosecuted for choosing blotter art as his artistic medium. I don't think the jury convicted him.)

The Peron regime of Argentina imported beavers from Canada with the idea of starting a beaver fur industry. The beavers were released not on the mainland, but in the southern island forest region known variously as Tierra del Fuego or Patagonia.

The beavers have flourished. Unlike North America, in South America beavers have no natural predators to kill and eat them, and keep their numbers in balanced control.

In Argentina and Chile the population has exploded, and denuded the region of trees as the beavers cut down the trees to build their dams and lodges.

Meanwhile, the commercial market for beaver fur has vanished. Nobody wants fur coats, and of all the mammal fur people no longer want to wear, beaver fur is among the least desireable.

If just one pregnant beaver should swim to the mainland -- and beavers are wonderful swimmers -- the continent of South America will, within a few decades, be overrun with beavers. They will drift north to the great Amazon rain forest -- and begin cutting down the Lungs of the World.

Cuidado los castores! Beware the beavers!

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