Karen Hamburger, a longtime volunteer with us, recently passed along another batch of trail camera video clips from our Derr Wetland Restoration. You might remember seeing some of her video in an earlier post.
This time, much of her footage was centered around beaver dams. There were quite a few video clips of beavers repairing dams or swimming past, along with otters, muskrats, ducks, and other wetland creatures. However, Karen also captured some more terrestrial species using the beaver dams.
I often use beaver dams as a convenient bridge to cross a stream, and I know I’m not alone in that. It makes sense that those same dams are important crossing locations for many wildlife species as well. Karen’s trail cameras documented some of those crossings, including species such as bobcat, raccoon, coyote, and white-tailed deer. See below.
In addition to wildlife, Karen’s camera also caught another creature crossing a beaver dam at our wetland. Not once, but twice, she documented photographer Michael Forsberg working his way across the stream with camera in hand.
Mike has been photographing the wetland for many years, and has his own set of camera traps (trail cameras) at the site. He has also been helping us capture timelapse imagery from the site through both the Platte Basin Timelapse Project and Moonshell Media. This time, Mike got caught on the other end of the camera.
Beavers play important engineering roles in landscapes. Their dam construction activities change water flow patterns, flood low-lying areas, and create important habitat for many plant and animal species. Karen’s videos are a good reminder that beaver activity not only affects wetland species, it also affects movement patterns of terrestrial species by providing stream crossings. As beaver dam locations change, wildlife have to adjust their travel accordingly, and it’s fun to think about how those movement changes could ripple through ecosystems. The location of a stream crossing for both predators and herbivores affects where those animals choose to forage, for example. The fate of a plant or small mammal could well be decided by where a deer or coyote can cross a stream – which may be determined by where a beaver family decides to place a dam. Fascinating!
The Prairie Ecologist 