A cherry tree became a meal for a local beaver along the Tidal Basin in D.C.
The National Park Service said staff found a Yoshino cherry tree that had been chewed on in October, and quickly narrowed down the list of suspects to a North American Beaver.
Beavers are active in the Potomac year-round, but are most often spotted in the area in the spring and fall.
“Sometimes beavers chew on branches and trees to get material for building a dam, but most of the time, they’re just eating wood and bark; the majority of their diet,” the National Park Service said on Friday.
To prevent another tree from getting chowed down, park staff made the area “as uninviting as possible to beavers.”
The National Park Service put up fencing around the base of the healthy trees and around the nearby sea wall on the Tidal Basin that not only stops debris from washing ashore, but deters beavers from getting up on the bank.
The park service natural resource team and arborists decided to leave the tall stump in place as habitat for woodpeckers, sapsuckers and other wildlife.
They removed the top of the tree and the branches so the tree wouldn’t be a falling hazard.
