Welcome to the secret life of beavers! This spring we set up a trail camera at a restored wetland pond to observe wildlife that might be using the improved habitat. To our delight, a North American beaver has already moved in and started building a dam. Enjoy this short video of several beaver cam moments.
Beavers are ecosystem engineers. They create, modify, and maintain incredible habitat to a variety of other species including salmon and other fish, mammals like river otters, waterfowl, insects, amphibians, and reptiles. Beavers are critical in the creation of healthy and diverse ecosystems.
Not too long ago, between 60- 250 million beaver ponds once covered North America, the size of Arizona and Nevada combined! Trapping and habitat destruction severely impacted beaver populations after European settlement and continue to impact the species today. According to the Chehalis Basin Lead Entity, beavers are important culturally to the Chehalis people and are in many Chehalis tales.
We’re looking forward to watching how the beaver changes the habitat!
