In May 2015, we made a fortuitous discovery! Wolf V009 had pulled a beaver out of a tiny, little creek in the middle of the forest and killed it. After we found the kill, we walked upstream and discovered a new little dam on the creek (see pics). (1/7)

This beaver was building a new pond! We thought this was pretty neat but did not think much more of it. To put things in context: we had only been studying wolf-beaver interactions for 3 weeks at this point and were clueless in most respects. (2/7)

About 1.5 wks later, we walked by this new pond and noticed the dam had blown and the little pond had drained. Wolf V009 had stopped this beaver from flooding the forest and creating a pond. No beaver has tried to build a dam at this spot since this happened ~6 years ago. (3/7)

The photos below show this spot in May 2015 and then this October.
As we continued studying wolf predation on beavers over the following years, we continued to watch the same thing happen over and over. The pattern became clear and obvious. (4/7)

A young, dispersing beaver would start to create a new pond or repair the dam of an old pond, then a wolf would kill that beaver, and the dam would blow and the pond drain. When dispersing beavers build dams, they do so alone. (5/7)

So it makes sense that once a wolf kills the beaver, there is no beaver left to keep up the dam/pond. Our research also shows that rarely, if ever, does another disp. beaver settle down in one of these new or repaired ponds after a wolf kills the initial dispersing beaver. (6/7)

And by this very simple process, wolves are connected to wetlands and wetland creation. We will be sharing more insights from our new research on wolves, beavers, and wetlands this week. You can read the published study for free here: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/46/eabc5439
(7/7)