Missouri’s occurrence databases hold 347 American beaver records, most of them iNaturalist photos rather than museum specimens or trapping surveys. That figure tracks documentation, not how many beavers actually work the state’s waterways.
Ozark spring branches meet Missouri River bottoms
Reports cluster in two distinct settings. Mark Twain National Forest and the Ozark National Scenic Riverways sit in the Ozark Plateau, where spring-fed streams like the Current and Jacks Fork run clear and cold even in a dry summer. Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge, in the far northwest, sits instead in the Missouri River’s floodplain below the loess hills, where beavers work oxbow sloughs and backwater wetlands rather than a running current. Those two regions cover most of what counts as beaver country in Missouri.
A dam builder that never stops chewing
Beavers cut bark, twigs, and water plants, and they cache branches near the lodge so they can feed through cold stretches without leaving open water. Along Ozark gravel bars that means sycamore and willow; in the Missouri River bottoms it’s more often cottonwood and box elder. Records run through every month but climb in spring, when high water and new plant growth push beavers into more visible stretches of stream and floodplain.
Status in Missouri
NatureServe ranks the American beaver S5, secure, and Missouri’s own status data lists it as native, with no nonindigenous record from USGS NAS. It’s recorded across nearly every drainage in the state that offers a bank to dig into and timber to cut, from Ozark spring branches to river-bottom sloughs in the north.
Full species profile
