Beavers build dam while government twiddles it’s thumbs
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Thanks for sharing the article!
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It’s good to see an example of where beaver damming is welcomed. Most of the time their dams are not in the best spot to co-exist with human infrastructure or agriculture. Often though you can tweak the dam in ways to make it more desirable using Beaver Deceiver devices to lower the impounded water or shift the alignment of the dam.
I have photos of one site in my state where a beaver dam on a creek was in the right place for farmers to insert a long PVC pipe into the dam and divert some of the impounded water into an irrigation ditch. So the farmers and beavers were both accomplishing what they wanted.
Edit: I like this correction in the article. Should’ve consulted iNat for the photo.
A correction was made onFeb. 13, 2025
A picture caption with an earlier version of this article, relying on information from Getty Images, misidentified the semiaquatic rodents shown in the image. The photograph showed nutria, not beavers. The image has been replaced.
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Are we sure they didn’t use a photo of Gerald?
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To build a dam, the beavers, whose weight as adults can range from about 40 to 80 pounds, begin by piling small stones across a river or stream, packing those stones in with mud, and repeating the process to construct a pond, which they then expand to become a wetland, Dr. Fairfax said.
This seems to be saying beaver dams are made of rocks? I’ve seen a lot of beaver dams and they are all made of sticks
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They do both, depending on materials available. But the foundation of the dam can be stones and mud. Sticks and mud as they raise it.
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True, it’s just that as written this looks like they are made of all rocks