Beavers are widely distributed across Key Habitats statewide, including Flowing Water & Riparian, Wetland, and Aspen Woodlands. Beaver habitat, or habitat for beaver, is the specific combination of water, food, cover, and space that beaver need to support their survival on the landscape through time. Beaver are semi-aquatic species that require still or slow-moving, perennial water at stable depths for cover, protection from predators, access to food resources, and food storage in the winter. Beavers are slow on land and prefer to forage within 100 feet of their water source. They need sufficient early seral stage stream buffers of deciduous and herbaceous riparian vegetation for food and foraging activities. Beavers are highly territorial and require adequate lateral and longitudinal habitat quality and stability to support their occupancy on the landscape. In rivers and stream networks, one beaver family unit (on average two adults, two sub-adults, and two kits) needs approximately 0.5 to 1.5 linear stream miles for ample space to survive, reproduce, and thrive. Beaver habitat, habitat for beaver, supports the building blocks that beaver need to create beaver-modified habitats, or habitat by beaver.
Beaver-modified habitat, or habitat by beaver, are the specific conditions beaver create when they alter their terrestrial and aquatic habitat to improve their fitness and survival. Habitat modifications include denning, damming and ponding water, creating canals or side-channels, importing woody and vegetative materials into flowing water and wetlands, and changing the structure of riparian vegetative communities. This suite of habitat modifications and their cumulative effects can provide benefits such as increased complexity and connectivity of Key Habitats and habitat, structure, and refugia for SGCN. Nevertheless, beaver activity can also result in flooding, loss of vegetation, economic loss on working lands, and conflict with private landowners. Actions focused on beaver habitat and beaver-modified habitats should also include efforts to mitigate negative impacts and reduce potential conflicts.
Habitat limitations for beaver, such as declining surface water availability, altered floodplain disturbance regimes, conversion and loss of wet meadow and wetland habitats, and altered riparian vegetation communities, are also primary limiting factors for many SGCN.