February 2nd, 2013. A
few weeks ago we went by eastern swamp on Enoch John Road in Wilkes County,
Georgia.
It was sunny on Saturday and we
went back to Wilkes County to check on another creek but drove by the swamps. Road work had been done on the west swamp on
Anderson Mill Creek to channel the water from the rain we had last week.
mini-dam was gone but this didn’t affect the beaver lodge at the east end of
the swamp.
The sight that confronted us when
we drove down the hill on Satruday was shocking…
We walked along the ridge to the
side of the swamp to get a better view of the lodge.
It didn’t take long to see where
the dam had been breached…
A section of the dam had been
removed, leaving just a small streamlet draining through it. (the road is in the background).
A bulldozer had removed a section about six to seven feet
long from the dam during the few days after the last rain judging by the
freshness of the marks scoured into the side of the hole.
The destruection seems particularly wonton when the area
has been in a relatively severe drought for a few years and the water impounded
by this dam supports not only the beaver but other wildlife in the surrounding
area. The dam was structurally sound and didn’t present any risk to the road
just below it. Rather than destroying a large section of the dam down to its
base, it would have made more sense to insert an overflow pipe into this
section of the dam rather than destroy it completely. Hopefully, since this is
prime real estate for beaver, they will repair the dam and return the swamp to
its previous state.
Click
on an image to view a larger image
Identification Resources:
University of Georgia Museum of Natural History: American
Beaver (Castor canadensis)
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posts:
2 comments:
Hopefully, the beavers will have more sense than the humans.
Hopefully... Unless someone puts in an overflow pipe and rebuilds the dam around it, this area will dry out badly if we have another dry summer. But it's a big rebuild job...
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