For International Beaver Day, a beaver swimming in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming

© Charlie Hamilton James/Getty Image

Leave it to the beaver. Busy building wetlands

For International Beaver Day, we take a peek at one of nature's most prolific engineers, the beaver. This sleek swimmer is at Schwabacher’s Landing, a boat landing along the east shore of the Snake River in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park. Beavers build dams to help keep their lodges and litters safe, but the positive impacts ripple through the environment: restoring wetlands, combating climate change, and removing fertilizer runoff. If we protect their habitat, beavers will pay it forward by creating the wetlands so many threatened or endangered species rely on.