Tree gnawed by a beaver [OC]
A tree about to fall into the backwater of the river Altmühl in Eichstätt, Bavaria, Germany.
Edit: Link to full album, hope you enjoy it as much as imgurians do: https://imgur.com/gallery/z1ddA72
A tree about to fall into the backwater of the river Altmühl in Eichstätt, Bavaria, Germany.
Edit: Link to full album, hope you enjoy it as much as imgurians do: https://imgur.com/gallery/z1ddA72
Wait....Germany has beavers? I thought they were a North American thing?
Yes but they are a different species. North America has the appropriately named North American beaver whereas they have the Eurasian beaver.
Eurasian beavers were actually nearly hunted to extinction by the onset of the 20th century but fortunately conservation efforts have led to their population numbers rebounding considerably.
lol:
Wait, then why did Europeans have such a raging boner for beaver pelts from the new world during the colonial period? Couldn't they just.... Get them from these local beavers?
Because we'd hunted almost all the European ones by that point.
Oh wow. Impressive that they're listed as least concern in that graphic then!
Germany has taken some serious "renaturation" steps to fix the grave errors done since the 1940s to 1980s where they straightened rivers and dried up a lot of land. E.g. at all of Altmühl's weirs they dug a little creek around it to enable fish to migrate or sometimes even bigger projects like this one:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/yTYY9TDoMbmgHsGo7 The EU however to this day pays subsidies if you drain your land which is just beyond stupid.
This makes me happy to hear! I'd imagine the trees are less enthused though 😁
Sometimes they protect trees with some chain-link fence or something similar wrapped around the tree trunk