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How to Make a Beaver Habitat

Whether you are trying to attract beavers to your area or raising them professionally, creating a suitable beaver habitat allows captive beavers to have all the amenities of the wild without any additional stressors. This large rodent's lodge houses the extended family of parents, last season's young, and the newborn kits. Beavers live throughout North America, except the deserts, Arctic and Florida peninsula. Because beavers manipulate their environment so thoroughly, setting up a beaver habitat focuses on ensuring the basics are available within the chosen location.

Things You'll Need

Logs (optional)
Leafy plants
Trees

Instructions

- 1
  Create or choose a pond with a soft bottom and a continuous water supply. The marshland should cover at least 0.5 square miles in area. Streams are also acceptable, but the beavers will build a dam across the stream to flood the area into a marshy pond.
- 2
  Adjust the water flow, if possible, so that the water level is at least three feet deep at all times. Beavers build dams to regulate any minor fluctuations.
- 3
  Provide ample logs and access to mud for the beaver to construct its lodge. Beavers feel unsettled without a lodge to provide protection from predators, such as wolves, hawks and big cats.
- 4
  Plant small ground cover overhanging the edge of the pond and in the shallow waters to provide shelter.
- 5
  Plant aquatic plants, such as water lilies, duckweed, pondweed and cattails, for the beavers to eat.
- 6
  Plant ample woody, leafy plants and trees around the water with larger trees near the water for building materials and smaller trees further away for food. Large trees must have a water path to the lodge. Preferred trees include aspen, alder, willows, cottonwood and dogwoods.

Animals & Science