The Beaver Pond on the Spring Creek Nature Trail. When some think of beavers, they think of a nuisance, but beavers are classified as a Keystone species. Beaver ponds create wetlands which are some of the most productive and bio-diverse eco-systems. Wetlands help to increase plant, fish, bird, and wildlife variety, improve water quality, and mitigate against the effects of flooding. Although beavers are infamous for cutting down trees, the process by which they create their ponds opens up the area to more sunlight and thereby increases the possibility for other species to thrive. Beaver ponds also help our climate, storing carbon in the form of buried organic matter and slowly releasing it as methane. So the next time you are out on the Spring Creek Nature Trail, take a walk around the Beaver Pond and appreciate what nature has created for us.
