2025 May 25 Leave it to Beavers
Like so many of our native wildlife friends, beavers are often seen as pests. They chop down trees and cause floods. I was lucky enough to see the other side of the story on Thursday at the Beaver Coexistence Workshop led by Meg Hennessey, the Watershed Coordinator with Cuyahoga Soil and Water. She and Steve Ecrement of Ohio Beaver Strategies set the record straight about beaver facts and fiction, beaver behavior, and solutions for working together with nature. Steve Ecrement teaching us all about beaver behavior. Beavers build up dams where they hear running water. Their ideal living conditions are a big pond and flooded canals through wetlands. They are excellent aquatic mammals, but they are vulnerable to predators on land. They are voracious vegetarians who need all kinds of plant life from tall trees to diverse aquatic plants for survival. When they build their dams and lodges, they also build habitat for other wetland-loving species like swans who safely nest atop lodges and...
