Beaver Dams Monday Imagine taking a walk in the woods and stumbling across a quiet pond created by a beaver dam. It's easy to assume that the pond has been there for a long time, but in reality you are really witnessing a snapshot in time, one moment in the ever-changing history of the surrounding landscape. If you are observant, and you know a little bit about the natural history of beavers, you can tell when the pond was made. If the beaver lodge is vacant, you can also make some guesses as to how long the inhabitants have been absent, and what the landscape might look like in a few years time.
Nature leaves many clues behind.
Tom Wessels, author of Reading the Forested Landscape , has learned how to read many of them, and he shares his knowledge with us in a two-day field trip he's leading at Montshire next week. Listen in as we learn more about how to read some riddles posed by beaver dams. Tuesday We know that beavers are spunky engineers that can whip up a lodge in just a few days. They gnaw down trees, drag them to the lodge site, dam up moving water, and create a landscape populated with hardwood stumps. In short, they cause a lot of disruption.