Beaver Diet

A common misconception is that beavers eat fish; in reality, they are strict herbivores with a broad diet of plant material. In the Clun Valley, our beavers feed on a wide variety of trees, shrubs, grasses, and aquatic vegetation depending on the season.

During spring and summer, their diet consists mainly of soft vegetation like water lilies, fern shoots, and grasses.

As autumn and winter approach, they shift their focus to bark and cambium layer of trees like willow, alder, aspen, and hazel, storing winter food caches underwater near their lodge.

Seasonal Menu:

• Preferred Trees: Willow, Alder, Aspen, Birch, and Hazel
• Summer Greens: Water lilies, reeds, rushes, herbs, and coarse grasses
• Winter Food Caches: Sunken piles of branches anchored in deep water near the lodge
• Cambium Feeding: Stripping nutritious inner bark while leaving bare wooden sticks for dam building
• Digestion Strategy: Specialist gut flora allows them to efficiently process woody cellulose

AI Generated Beaver Stripping Bark