Co-author: Irina Rotenko
Driving on the roads in Naliboki Forest or even walking on roads, remember that beavers live at roads the terrain-wide and dig plenty of burrows therein. According to the rough estimate, we assume that actually there are thousands of beaver burrows and their remains in the roads of Naliboki Forest. Gradually beavers enlarge their burrows and under press of heavy vehicles especially forestry lorries and other technics they collapse. In effect a pit in the roads appears sometimes rather deep and (or) large one . It is easy to get such a pit, while driving the forest roads particularly the first time or at night.
For unexperienced people it is so unexpected to get such a beaver pit by their vehicle particularly on a built road. Most of people realize that beavers live only in lodges and built dams like in the photos below. But it is not entirely true actually.
Believe us, many of beavers in Naliboki Forest live at roads digging burrows in roads. Naliboki Forest is a lowland one with a lot of swamped habitats. While building roads there in 1980s-2010s, the top-grounds around were used. Many canals appeared along such roads as a result. With time almost all such canals were occupied by beavers. They dug thousands of burrows in roads in Naliboki Forest.
On the photos you see such a canal along one of the roads in Naliboki Forest. The canal semidried during summer drought, and thus you can see much burrowing activity of beavers there.
Beaver settlement along the canal that is situated aside of the road.
Beavers at roads and collapsed beaver burrows in Naliboki Forest.
Even once while walking one road that was rarely used (but still a road, where we saw a vehicle trail), one of us fell inside a suddenly collapsed beaver burrow and under fallen ground we found a small beaver cub, which was released back.