While beavers can alter the landscape to suit them, this ability can lead to conflicts with humans. Generally, conflict has little to do with the animal itself. Beaver dams are the largest source of conflict. They can cause damage by altering waterways and causing extensive flooding.
Beavers create dams to stop water flow and create deeper pools, leading to flooding beyond the beavers' immediate residence. This becomes a problem near roads, crop fields, and timber-producing areas. Flooding can destroy row crops and kill trees in timber stands. Beavers will also construct dams on culverts along roads. This causes increased pressure on the culvert and can lead to a road collapse. Dams will also cause flooding across roads since the dam prevents water from moving through the culvert properly.
Beavers seek out trees of specific sizes for dam and lodge construction. Both trees planted for timber production and trees of ornamental value can fall victim to these living chainsaws.
When beavers remove trees from shorelines, they can increase the erosion rate on a waterway's banks. Beavers spend much of their time in areas where land transitions into water. They will burrow along the bank and drag trees from land to their dams. As they use these travel corridors, they can increase the intensity of erosion. Burrows can cause erosion since beavers will dig into the bank, which compromises the structure of the shoreline. Sometimes these burrows collapse, which will also increase the impact of erosion on a stream.
