The beavers in the game are cute; busy about their work, swimming in the water, setting up dynamite... but how is this similar to beavers in the wild? My goal is to provide a bit of info from around the web here in one place to satisfy your need to know more.

Beavers are considered to be helpful to our environment. With all their dam building, farming along the water bank, and engineering waterways; beavers create habitats for many aquatic organisms, including a place for salmon to spawn. They maintain the water table at an acceptable level year round, even during the drought season when the sap starts dropping and the ground water lowers deeper into the soil. They control flooding and erosion.

The beavers in the game seem to take care of all this. Pictured is a screenshot of Iron Teeth beavers swimming out into the river just above the dam to blow a channel on the river floor on the Meandering River map.

Not everything beavers do is perfectly fine for the environment, or the rest of us. Here are just a few examples with links to explore further:

• Beavers are gnawing away at the permafrost in the Arctic. This is speeding up climate change. But, hey, who are we to talk?! Let's not blame it all on the beavers.
  CNN Article [www.cnn.com]
  
• Some folks in South America thought they could improve on the habitat by importing beavers. Turned out to be a bad idea. The beech trees die after being gnawed, and streams are stagnating into bogs. Now, the Argentine and Chilean governments want to return the beavers. They are destroying the area for Tierra Fuego's other wildlife. They should have left the beavers where they were probably.
  Nature Link [www.nature.com]
  National Geographic Article[www.nationalgeographic.com]

Cool Facts and Info about our friends the beavers:

• There are North American Beavers and European Beavers. They look a little different in head shape.
  
• Identifying beaver tracks is simple. Their hind feet have 6 toes. Northern Bushcraft [northernbushcraft.com]
  
  
• Beavers dig channels in the river and lake beds.
  
• Beavers float logs down stream to build dams and lodges.
  
• Beavers build lodges that are bear proof, and that often have two hidden entrances.
  
• The longest beaver dam in the world was discovered with Google Earth. Geo[www.geostrategis.com]
  
  
• Beavers are mostly nocturnal animals.
  
• Beavers are among the largest rodents in the world. They don't hibernate.
  
• Beavers eat leaves, roots, and bark from trees; including Aspens, Willows, Maples, and Poplar Trees.
  
• Beavers live out the winter on food they stock on the lake/ river bottom.
  
  
• Beavers are monogamous and live in colonies with their offspring.
  
• When they reach two years old, the kits leave the lodge and make one of their own, probably near their parents. At age three they will find a mate.
  
• Beavers give birth to 1-4 kits and the gestation period is around 105 to 107 days.
  
• Both male and female beavers mark their territory with scent glands at the base of their tails.
  
• Beaver families are territorial and defend against other families.
  
• Beavers were almost hunted to extinction for their pelts and meat, and castoreum for medicines and perfumes. Now, they have been protected so they are no longer endangered.
  
• Adult beavers can swim 5 mph. and cut over 200 trees per year.

Want to see beavers busy at work? Lucky for us some guys at BBC arranged to get video footage inside a Beaver Lodge. Here's the short 10 minute video.


Want more? Here's a great video on Nat Geo for kids page.
Info page with video. [kids.nationalgeographic.com]

A PBS 'Leave it to Beavers' Documentary link provided by -@The_Mess
Want to Solve Wildfires and Drought? Leave it to BEAVERS!

In this section, I'd like to add random discoveries about Beavers IRL, many that readers report and which I can verify.

• "In 2008 a population of Beavers turned up on the River Otter (name is a happy coincidence) in England. They were the first Wild Beavers in England in 400 years... and no-one knows how they got there. Did they swim from France? Smuggled by Greenpeace? Time-travel? A decade later, they have transformed the wetland and all local species are thriving. They are amazing creatures." -@Cato's Contribution
  The link here contains good video. River Otter Beaver Trail[www.devonwildlifetrust.org]
  
• "76 beavers were dropped by parachutes in 1948" -@arkendight's contribution
  This was part of an overpopulation relocation effort after the war. Their methods would be seen as sketchy today. Sad for the flying beavers. The link has historic video footage.
  National Geographic[www.nationalgeographic.com]
  
• "Fun fact - it's illegal to bring them into New Zealand under the Biosecurity Act. Partly because our keystone trees take ages to grow, especially Nothofagus beech. Though I see some definite utility in having them to control bloody invasive crack willows. Of course though, due to the tendency for major regular floods in the worst affected places they'd need man made lodges or tamed and so able to be evacuated." -@The_Mess's contribution
  (See Wikipedia article on 'Beaver' under the 'Distribution and Status' subheading, last paragraphs.)
  
• "Beavers also contribute to forest fire control, and are being reintroduced to areas in the PNW (Pacific Northwest) US to help prevent/reduce the risk of forest fires spreading too far! By expanding the water table of their area, they create a natural fire break." -@WitchyPorcupine's contribution.

This is all I have for now.
I will update the guide as the game continues in development.
I hope this small bit makes your time in the game a bit more enjoyable, and satisfies your beaver cuteness overload with a bit of IRL facts.