Off the Grid  Retirement at our remote log cabin in Colorado

Tuesday, August 04, 2015

A Busy Bunch of Beavers

Posted by: Lynne

Our land has always had a beaver pond. When we first bought the property back in 1988 there were active beavers. Something happened, not sure just what, but the beavers abandoned the pond and over the years it has actually started to silt over into more like a boggy meadow on one end. It's been that way a very long time.

We were shocked to hike down there this past trip to find it occupied again -- big time. Our little pond has tripled in size and we can longer reach it easily. The beavers had "beavered" away at tons of aspens. Chewed off stumps were everywhere. We now have a clearing where once stood an aspen forest. 

All that destruction to build this huge hotel of a beaver hut:

And this double dam:

In this photo taken from the beaver hut side of the pond you can see the clearing that's been made by taking out so many trees. It used to be solid aspen trees.

See that tree hanging over the pond on the end? The fourth photo down (above) is that same tree. Someone didn't have their engineering degree yet I guess because it obviously fell the wrong way. A waste of a good tree. A BIG tree.

Here's another example of bad engineering. This tree is almost there. But not quite!

It ended up resting on other trees. Pretty amazing. I am thinking that over the winter either the snow or wind will finally take it down. I bet that beaver was pretty frustrated after all that work!

I am glad we have beavers again but I wish they weren't quite so descrutive! I hope after all this work that they stay awhile and don't abandon it yet again! 

Comments:

Beavers are so cute and industrious.  I saw so many of their huge dams in Lake Champlain, from the train to Montreal, this spring.  It’s a wonder how they do all that construction!

On the other hand, when it is your land, it is DESTRUCTIVE!!!!!

BIgsis, I think their teeth must hurt when they’re done. wink

Yes, they are destructive but now we might be able to stock some fish in the pond and they can winter there too. So, good things can come from all that destruction. They are busy little beavers!

It’s cool that you have beavers, even if they are destructive. They’re amazingly industrious and apparently they’re actually good for the environment, because they build aquatic habitats in what might otherwise be arid areas. (That’s what they said on TV, anyway!)

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