Scott Hayes, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter | [email protected]
An offering of wood is a way of ensuring that the Maxwell Lake beavers stick around, according to Hinton's parks, recreation and culture manager.
“Seven or eight years ago now, the beavers had actually eaten and used up most of the wood or the trees that they would normally eat. What happens in nature is once they've eaten up the materials that are close to their lodge, they'll take off. They go find some other water with better wood to eat,” Heather Waye said.
“The beavers, if they don't migrate away because of food, eventually they'll just stay here.”
She noted that the town undertakes this practice with the advice and assistance of local and regional biologists and other experts to ensure the utmost of care and responsibility toward the Beaver Boardwalk area’s ecology.
The practice also helps to ensure that the beavers maintain the dam, which in turn offers a reasonable reliability that the water level will stay the same.
Town staff work with West Fraser staff to offer the best-suited trees for the purpose.
“We work with the mill to transport in some Aspen as they're doing their logging and cutting and things like that. They'll bring in food that they've identified as acceptable for the beavers. They drop it off with our parks folks, and then the parks guys take it out, and they drop it into the water for the beavers so it’s partially food, but largely at this time of year, it's their winter cache.”
Autumn is when beavers are active in the hunt for abundant food to fill their winter food cache, which is usually stored adjacent to the lodge. Trembling Aspen are choice meals for the flat-tailed semi-aquatic rodents.
The practice means taking a truckload or two of thinner trees and lodging them into the mud at the bottom of Maxwell Lake.
When the surface of the lake freezes in the winter, the beavers swim under the ice to harvest that food throughout the winter if they need it.
Waye considers the feeding a success because it also prevents the beavers from felling other trees, ones that might cause a hazard around the boardwalk.
