| About Beaver |
at the John Brockway | |
Nature Preserve | |
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About Beaver at the John Brockway Nature Preserve
BEAVERS CREATE HABITAT
FOR THEMSELVES -- AND OTHERS
What does an evergreen forest have to do with beavers? Thier eating habits are one of the resons you see predminantly hemlock and pine trees on the Brockway Preserve. Given a choice, beaver would much rather eat the succlent bark of small hardwood saplings -- aspen, aleer, or maple -- than that of evergreens. Over the decades, they have selectively weeded out many of the hardwoods, inadvertently helping to create the forst habitat you see here now.
Namhy other animals thrive under cover of this kind of forest. Though seldom seen, we know they live here because of their unmistakable tracks in the winter snow. Numerous snowshoe hare hop about under the evergreen trees, their winter white fur lending them a little amouflage, but not enoughj to prevent their falling prey to several other animals, the fisher and the bobcat, for two.
On a bright winter morning, you are very apt to see the paired tracks of fisher bounding off in wide, graceful