Minnesota’s occurrence databases hold 2,430 records for the American beaver, the sixth-highest total of any mammal tracked this way in the state. Reports cluster around Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge and the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, but that pattern reflects where people have looked, not a count of every lodge.
A dam-builder living up to the state’s nickname
With more than 10,000 named lakes plus thousands of streams and marshes, Minnesota gives the beaver about as much shoreline as any state to work with. It gnaws bark, twigs, and aquatic plants, and stockpiles branches near its lodge to get through the state’s long, ice-locked winters, when open water and fresh browse both disappear. From the Mississippi headwaters at Itasca State Park to the North Shore of Lake Superior, wherever there’s a slow stream or a shallow marsh, a beaver dam or a gnawed stump usually isn’t far off.
The animal that named a national park
Voyageurs National Park takes its name from the French-Canadian canoe traders who paddled this exact chain of Boundary Waters lakes two centuries ago, hauling beaver pelts out to feed a European hat trade. The beaver’s own engineering, its dams, canals, and lodges, shaped this water-heavy landscape long before the fur trade, and it still does. Recorded sightings peak in April and May, when ice-out reopens the state’s lakes and rivers and beavers become easier to see repairing winter-damaged dams.
Status in Minnesota
NatureServe hasn’t assigned Minnesota’s beaver a numeric rank, but the species is native here and isn’t flagged as introduced by USGS NAS. Its dams and lodges remain part of the working landscape across nearly every watershed in the state.
Full species profile
