Beaver Relocated

For the past several years I have seen signs of beaver along the Cedar River. Last winter he started really attacking some gigantic Cottonwood trees, cutting one down altogether, and killing three or four more by girdling them (chewing off all the bark, all the way around. Today I walked over to see how he was doing and discovered that the Parks Department has cut down the dead trees and put wire mesh around the remaining trees to stop the chewing. I also heard a rumor that they had trapped 9 beavers, or trapped one beaver 9 times, and relocated him upstream. Maybe this is the last we'll see of the beaver for a while.

Here in this first photo you can see three stumps, all that remains of three awesome Cottonwood trees.

This second photo shows the freshly chewed wood over the top of the dark brown older chewing marks. The whole trunk is now surrounded by 1/4 inch wire mesh.

This third photo shows the tree the beaver successfully cut down and then stripped of all of its bark. Notice that the beaver only had to chew away the outer layer of wood since the Cottonwood's heartwood was already rotten and was unable to support the weight of the tree.

This last photo shows a close up of the teeth marks on the log that had been laying in the river. You may have to download the full size photo and zoom in to see the teeth marks.