Mountain Beaver
by Frankie D.
Did you know the Mountain Beaver is the only type of beaver that is endangered? This vicious animal has never been domesticated. The Mountain Beaver looks like a gopher or a tailless muskrat.
It has a short stout body with rounded eyes and ears. It weighs about 2-4 pound and is 1 foot long with a cylindrical tail. Their thick, short fur is brown. The mountain beaver has long, curved claws for digging.
The mountain beaver is a vicious animal that has never been domesticated. When they are disturbed, they can secrete a thick material from their eyes. The rodent travels in groups called colonies.
Mountain beavers live in burrows with about ten to thirty entrances. They live mostly on the west coast of the United States, in the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, which is in California, Oregon, Nevada, and Washington.
The mountain beaver is endangered, which means that there are not a many left. This rodent is endangered because the increasingly large human population is taking over its environment and ruining the forest it lives in. In 1991, the Fish and wildlife Service (FWS) put the mountain beaver on the endangered species list, which now protects them.
What man can do is stop cutting down trees and moving into their environment. I hope you can see that the Mountain Beaver is an interesting animal that needs man’s help to remain on this planet. Hopefully this gopher like beaver will no longer be on the endangered species list.