How Do They Do It?
It’s hard to believe that beavers are able to chew right through the trunk of a tree, but they do. Beavers have very strong and sharp teeth which are paired with powerful jaw muscles. A single beaver can fell a medium sized tree in a single night! Beaver teeth never stop growing, so it is believed that beavers need to constantly chew wood to prevent their teeth from growing too long! Amazingly, due to a hard orange enamel on the front side of their incisors and a softer white dentin on the backside of these teeth, their teeth are self-sharpening as they chew on wood. As beavers chew the softer backsides of the incisors wear faster, creating teeth with chisel-like cutting surfaces. They also have molars which they use for grinding their food.
Do They Eat the Wood?
When a beaver cuts down a tree it wants to eat the inner, growing (cambium) layer of the tree bark. That is why they will nibble all the bark off the branch, leaving a debarked stick. They will also eat the fine twigs and leaves. However, they do not eat the inner woody part of the branches and tree trunk as they are unable to digest the wood. Once the bark is all eaten from a branch, they reuse the stick to build their lodges and dams. A beaver’s diet consists solely of vegetation. They do not eat fish or any non-plant materials. The reason they topple trees is to gain access to all the bark on the tree as well as the smaller twigs and leaves. Branches will be chewed off in sections that are small enough to drag into the water for safe and leisurely eating. The bark of large tree trunks will be chewed where it lies if the beaver can reach it. Beavers prefer to cut down smaller diameter trees because the bark is thinner and easier to digest, but they can topple any size tree.
What Trees Species Do They Eat?
Beavers have a definite preference for the trees they like to eat. Preferred tree species include alder, aspen, apple, birch, cherry, cottonwood, poplar and willow. Aspen/poplar and cottonwood are their favorite. If the supply of their preferred trees is low they will harvest oaks and some maples. Conifers such as pines, hemlocks, etc. are their least favorite. Sometime they will girdle (remove the bark around the entire base) of conifers for an unknown reason. One possibility is to obtain some needed dietary nutrient.
Why Do They Cut so Much in the Fall?
If you live in a cold weather climate you may notice that beavers cut down the most trees in the late fall. This is because they are stockpiling a food cache of sticks for the winter. Beavers do not hibernate, so they plan ahead and store a large cache of edible sticks underwater near their lodge in order to be able to eat once the ponds freeze. Once the pond is frozen over and they can no longer access new trees, they will swim out of their lodge, grab an underwater stick, and bring it back to the comfort of their lodge to eat the bark.
How Far from Water Do Beaver Cut Trees?
Beavers are well adapted to water and evolved over millennia to use water as a defense from predators. While surprisingly fast over short distances, beavers nonetheless do not like to travel too far from the water to cut down a tree. Most trees that beavers cut down are within 100 feet of the water. As beavers deplete the supply of food trees close to the pond’s edge they will usually raise the height of the beaver dam to bring the pond closer to more distant trees. Another engineering trick beaver will employ is to excavate canals from the pond in the direction of the trees they wish to harvest. Once a tree is toppled they are able to cut off and transport the branches easier and more safely to the pond using their canal. Beaver are truly “Nature’s Engineers”!
Dead Trees are So Destructive and Ugly!
The sight of dead, flooded trees (snags) seems very destructive and ugly to most people. However, snags are needed by many species of birds. Swallows, wood ducks, blue herons, eagles, osprey, woodpeckers, turtles and many others rely on these dead trees for food, shelter and places to perch. The death of trees may look destructive and unattractive to us, but they are a necessary and extremely important habitat to many other species in the ecosystem.
The loss of these trees also allows significant more sunlight to reach the water. The sunlight, water, and suspended nutrients in the pond water combine to stimulate the immense growth of algae, microorganisms, invertebrates and aquatic plants that then become the foundation of the wetland food chain. These life forms become food for innumerable larger species and create a prolific biodiversity of species in and around a beaver pond. Beaver ponds are seven times more bioproductive than the most fertile farmland. They become magnets for wildlife. So at first glance the death of these trees appears to be a destructive act by the beaver, but it is actually an absolute requirement to support the abundance of life that makes these wetlands so valuable.
Tree protection also modifies the habitat by decreasing the beaver food supply. The more trees that are protected the sooner the beavers will exhaust their food supply. Eventually they will relocate but it often takes years. Trapping the beavers preserves the food supply and will keep it attractive habitat indefinitely. In our experience trapping is a short term solutions as new beavers often relocate to the trapped habitat every year.
Once an area is depleted of their preferred trees it won’t become good beaver habitat for another 10 – 15 years until new trees are large enough to provide adequate food.
Wrapping the trunks of trees with fencing not only protects the trees from chewing, but also modifies the habitat by decreasing the beaver food supply. The more trees that are protected the sooner the beavers exhaust their food supply and will relocate. The area typically won’t become good beaver habitat for 10 – 15 years until new trees are large enough to provide adequate food. This is a longer term (and less expensive) option if there are limited number of trees to protect. There is more information about tree protection on our website.