Monday, February 4, 2013

What Is Wrong With These People?


February 2nd, 2013. A few weeks ago we went by eastern swamp on Enoch John Road in Wilkes County, Georgia.
This is what the swamp looked like in the summer of 2011. And a closer view of the…

American Lotus (Nelumbo lutea) in bloom.

The treasure was a beaver lodge in the open pond just above the beaver dam.


A closer views…

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…


The swamp had been drained. The lodge was high and dry.

We walked along the ridge to the side of the swamp to get a better view of the lodge.

The western edge of the lodge was just above the water level of a channel through the swamp.

The back side of the dam at it’s highest point, and the…

area of water still behind the dam.

It didn’t take long to see where the dam had been breached…

The intact beaver dam near the road, photographed in December 2011, was intact when we saw it a few weeks ago, but now…


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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2 comments:

Kay G. said...

Hopefully, the beavers will have more sense than the humans.

JSK said...

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...