A couple of Canada’s national animals appear to be making themselves at home near downtown Edmonton. A pair of beavers could be seen hard at work Thursday morning in the North Saskatchewan River along River Valley Road near the Royal Glenora Club. Beavers, North America’s largest rodent, are hard at work in the fall - fixing up their homes and gathering food for winter, which they will spend cozied up in their lodges. The Edmonton & Area Land Trust says many beaver lodges have a “mother-in-law” suite where a muskrat will live in exchange for helping patch that section up. According to the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute, beavers can be found everywhere except the driest grasslands and high-elevation sites in the Rocky Mountains. In Alberta, it is legal to hunt and trap beavers year-round without a licence on private property. However, it is illegal to disturb or remove a den, lodge or dam with a lodge nearby without a valid licence anywhere in the province.
