> Of course they caused a ton of damage to trees around the trail, though whether that's good or bad depends on whether you were attached to those trees or not.

> Of course they caused a ton of damage to trees around the trail, though whether that's good or bad depends on whether you were attached to those trees or not. I've encountered relatively few people who were concerned about the damage to trees. The typical concern is over damage to land. Any animal than engineers their environment, including both beavers and humans, has a disproportionate ability to alter land use. That includes humancentric development and natural ecosystems. I am not going to claim that beavers are either good or bad. I am going to point out that humans are as much a part of nature as beavers, so preserving natural ecosystems is almost always in our favour. Yet there are circumstances where managing is likely a better approach than preserving, simply because nature can throw nasty things our way too. (We are, for example, not to eager to let rats thrive in our cities.)