A large rodent that swims in rivers and lakes and feeds on waterside plants.
Its broad tail is flattened horizontally. The hind feet are webbed and the front surfaces of the incisors are orange.
As winter approaches, Eurasian beavers pile branches underwater for the frozen season. Busher and colleagues surveyed 47 active sites in Sweden, Norway and Lithuania in autumn 2015, including streams, lakes and drainage channels beside farmland. Caches were present at 37 of the 47 sites by mid-November. By December, 41 sites had caches, a minimum count: Sweden and Lithuania were not revisited then, and ice prevented access to two Norwegian sites.
Water at cache locations was 1–2.3 metres deep, averaging 1.55 metres. The estimated start was 28 September–11 October in Sweden and Lithuania, and 12–18 October in Norway; cache initiation was associated with falling minimum temperatures. In the Norwegian study sites, neither family size nor years of territory occupancy significantly affected cache area.
IUCN Red List · Least Concern (LC) · Global species-level assessment
The IUCN global assessment lists the Eurasian beaver as Least Concern (LC), with an increasing population trend. The assessment date is 10 September 2016; an amended version was published in 2021. The assessment also records continuing decline in the area, extent or quality of habitat, and identifies hunting and trapping, logging, water management and industrial effluents among the threats. It records land and water protection, harvest management plans and successful reintroductions as conservation actions. This is a global species-level assessment and does not describe the condition of every local population.