Bank-dwelling beavers contribute to the wood regime in a dryland river

Casey A. Pennock, William W. Macfarlane, Phaedra Budy, Julianne Scamardo, Daniel C. White. 2026. Ecology107(5): e70396. DOI: 10.1002/ecy.70396

While floating down the lower White River (a major tributary to the Green River, eastern Utah) during the spring of 2020, we encountered broad swaths of recently cleared riparian forest (Figure 1a). As we navigated our rafts to the riverbank to get a closer look, we noticed fresh cut stumps (Figure 1b) revealing that beavers (Castor canadensis) were the culprit of this riparian harvest which included both native Fremont cottonwood (Populus fremontii) and nonnative Russian olive (Elaeagnus angustifolia) trees...