Beaver family calls Yukon golf course home

A golf course in Whitehorse has a new group of visitors, and they're not the types to just putter around.

"Well there's at least fourthat we know of. There's two dominant ones, a male and female that have been here on and off on the property," Meadow Lakes Golf Course owner Jeff Luehmann says.

The guests? Beavers. A family has built a dam in one of his ponds and now calls the water hazard home.The beavers moved in several years ago, and now there's an entire brood.

"I would say [they've been here] three to five years, and then there are young ones from last year," he says. The beavers go down Fox Farm Rd. in the summer and come back to the golf coursefor the fall.

He hopes nature would get the beavers out of his property, rather than a conservation officer. Normally, the practice is for them to destroy problem animals. But Luehmann says the critters are doing him a favour.

"What I do is put poplar," he says. "They feed on that. I also put metal mesh on the trees I want to keep."

"We just took the initiative," he says.