South Dakota’s occurrence databases hold 97 beaver records, most frequently recorded around Custer State Park’s Black Hills streams, though the species turns up wherever the state’s water slows down enough to dam.
Three very different waters, one requirement
Black Hills creeks like French Creek and Spring Creek in Custer State Park cut through granite canyons that beavers dam into chains of ponds. Farther east, the glaciated prairie-pothole wetlands hold the same kind of standing water, and the Missouri River’s reservoirs, Lake Oahe and Lake Sharpe among them, back slack water into flooded timber that beavers use just as readily. Wherever willow, cottonwood, or aspen grows along a bank, a beaver can build a home there.
Spring is when a beaver gets to work
Records peak in April and May, right as ice breaks up and beavers repair winter-damaged dams and lodges. That’s also when yearlings disperse to find their own stretch of water, so more animals are moving overland and showing up in daylight than at any other point in the year. Through the rest of the year they cut bark, twigs, and water plants and cache branches near the lodge to get through the cold months without leaving the water under the ice.
Status in South Dakota
USGS NAS doesn’t list the beaver as nonindigenous in South Dakota, and NatureServe ranks it S5, secure, in the state. It’s native to the range it occupies here, from Black Hills canyon streams to the Missouri River’s reservoir backwaters.
Full species profile
