Beaver

Description:

We have a beaver at our pond that is quite industrious. I will try to post better pics of his work soon but it is too muddy to try now :)

Habitat:

The beaver has dammed up the main spring that feeds a 6+acre man made pond creating it's own little cattail and lily-pad paradise. The second and third pictures show the dam. It is towards the center of the pictures, horizontal, and water on both sides of it :)

Notes:

I know many people who are trying to get rid of our beaver. Over the dry dry summer all of the other springs that feed our pond dried up. Between the beaver dam, the high heat/evaporation rates, and no other source of water coming into the pond it lost several feet of water and all of the algae died out before "summer" actually hit. We also noticed far fewer fish, turtles, and fireflies than normal. I can't even imagine what else was affected, assuming these things were actually affected or if they were merely coincidental. We have broken the dam in a few places to allow water through, and the beaver seems to be otherwise occupied for over the course of the last couple of months he has not repaired it very much. I assume he is working on his lodge. The pond has recuperated quickly and we hope to see it to normal depth by spring. I see no harm in creating a little more work for the beaver by breaking up his dam a bit. It has very little effect on his personal oasis. However, many of the people involved in "keeping" the pond want to see the beaver laying beneath a hearth somewhere... While I believe that the beaver is causing damage to the pond, I am curious if there is any possibility it could be benefiting it as well? Fortunately this industrial little guy keeps giving us the slip so he remains unharmed thus far. I'm not sure which side I'm on here.