When it comes to naturally efficient ecosystem engineering, leave it to beavers. The largest rodents in North America, growing up to four feet long and weighing up to sixty pounds, these primarily nocturnal, web-footed, paddle-tailed dam builders help create the critical wetland habitats that 85% of all North American wildlife depend on for survival. When a beaver gets down to buck-toothed business, it can cut down as many as 200 softwood trees a year for food and dam building. It takes about five minutes for a beaver to chomp through the trunk of an 8-foot tree and about a week to build a 35-foot dam. These water barriers form ponds that protect the beaver colony from predators and provide underwater access to the family lodge, a dry, cozy den where males and females rest, nest and raise baby beavers, known as kits. Beaver-built ponds help to increase biodiversity by providing pooled water, plant life and shelter that attracts and supports creatures great and small including frogs, salmon, trout, ducks, heron, deer, and elk.

Beaver ponds also protect against a parched planet by trapping carbon, capturing rainfall and storing groundwater. Ranging in size from small woody clumps to 2,800-foot long mega-barriers, beaver dams contribute to water purification by filtering silt and pollution and capturing run-off from fertilizers. By transforming the landscape with their stick, stone and mud constructions these remarkable, semiaquatic ecosystem engineers create environmental benefits for wildlife, people and planet. Busy beavers indeed!