Leave It to Beaver(s)

Beavers have been busy along Dug Road

decorahnews.com readers Tony & Liz send this e-mail: "Do you know anything about the trees that are down (or at least severely chewed up) near the river on the Dug Road trail?  Looks like the work of beavers to me.  Is this common for this area?"

Mr. Answer Person says: It's pretty impressive to see the size of some of the trees the beavers have taken down.  Mr. Answer Person wasn't aware that beavers tackled large trees such as these, so he turned to other "Answer Persons."

Tex Sordahl of the Luther Biology Department says: "From the picture, this does appear to be the work of beavers. They typically work at night, and I have seen beavers work on impressively large trees. It makes you wonder what they had in mind when they cut down those big trees, but I can't give a good explanation."

Tex suggested contacting Larry Reis, the naturalist at Lake Meyer.  Here's Larry's response: "As the old saying goes, busy as a beaver. Normally, beavers do not tackle trees that large, but as they run out of ready food supplies, which are typically small willow trees, they will take bigger trees to try and get the smaller branches at the treetops which they would then eat. This is a bottleneck time of year for wildlife as most food stores are gone and new growth has not started yet, so critters get rather desperate for food. They will probably continue working on large softwood or even large hardwoods like oak before they can find new sprouting willows or other tender new growth."

Thanks to Tex and Larry for their help.  Mr. Answer Person took several pictures of the beavers' work along Dug Road--they are posted below.

Close-up of the base of one tree along Dug Road