YouTube Video
Our featured beaver documentary of the week, embedded from YouTube.
Europe's comeback rodent: the return of Castor fiber
A century ago you could have counted every beaver in Europe. Today they are back in almost every EU member state — and they brought their chainsaw teeth with them.
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Beaver facts
- By the early 1900s the European beaver (Castor fiber) had been hunted down to roughly 1,200 animals in eight scattered relict populations.
- Coordinated reintroductions in Germany, France, Poland, the Netherlands and Scandinavia have since pushed the European population back above a million.
- European beavers are slightly narrower in the tail and less prolific dam-builders than their North American cousins — they often prefer to simply dig a bank burrow.
- A beaver lodge is a multi-generational household: parents, this year's kits and last year's yearlings all overwinter together.
- Beavers are a keystone species: their ponds create wetland habitat for amphibians, dragonflies, wading birds and fish nurseries.
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