Marie Langenhan was walking near her home on Boxing Day when she came across the burnt remains of a beaver dam in one of the Crestview greenbelt creeks.

“I was horrified,” Langenhan told the Star this morning. “I literally stopped, and was staring at it like, ‘What?’

“It’s been here for so long, and I physically have seen beavers down there last summer (of 2018).”

Langenhan said the dam, which has existed in that creek for several years, was pristine when she walked past it last Sunday. So pristine, in fact, she had stopped to take a picture of it.

Some time during the next four days, somebody set the dam on fire. When she returned four days later, she saw the dam had been partially incinerated.

Langenhan noticed several sets of footsteps around the dam. She thinks it may have been the victim of a bonfire a couple nights earlier.

“I think it might have happened around Christmas Eve –– either people who didn’t understand, or didn’t care, and it was just a convenient thing to burn down,” she said.

People have gathered in that area late at night in the past, Langenhan said. She can recall hearing voices and loud music behind her house on another evening.

Even though she didn’t hear anyone down at the creek this week, with the busy holiday season it’s possible she just didn’t notice it, she said.

“It’s kind of sad,” she said. “Even if it was vacant, and there was no current family of beavers in there, you wouldn’t know that when you’re setting fire to something.”

Langenhan posted the photos of the burnt dam to the Facebook group, Whitehorse Rants and Raves, in hopes of educating people not to interfere with animal habitats.

Multiple commenters were unable to recognize the dam as an animal habitat in the photos, which suggested to Langenhan that whoever set it on fire may have done so out of ignorance.

“I wanted (the perpetrators) to actually see that if you were unaware, this is what you’ve done,” she said.

“That was my intent–– to get across to whoever did it that this is a beaver home.”

Langenhan, who is a Northern Tutchone First Nation member, said she is considerate of traditional population curbing practices and hunting. As a hunter herself, she doesn’t believe the dam was set on fire for that reason.

“That’s not what this was – this was a senseless waste,” she said.

She said people in the neighbourhood are appreciative and respectful of the greenbelt, and she doesn’t believe anybody who lives nearby would have done this.

“(Beavers) are a keystone species, so that’s just not cool,” she said.

Beavers use dams for shelter and for food storage during the winter months.

Heather Avery, a spokesperson for the Department of Environment, told the Star that interfering with a beaver dam is illegal. The department is asking that anyone with information about the dam’s burning to call the TIPP line.

“If people have issues with beaver dams, they should be calling conservation officers,” she said.

Yukon conservation officer Caleb Stephen visited the burn site this morning.

The beaver lodge was located several metres away from the dam, he told the Star at noon, so no beavers nor food stores were affected by the fire.

He guessed that somebody had lit the dead debris around the dam on fire in the previous few days.

“I don’t think there was any malicious intent. I think they were down there and it was just convenience; a pile of dead sticks,” Stephen said.

“The dam itself is in a greenbelt within the City of Whitehorse, so people shouldn’t be lighting a fire anyway, and the fact that it’s on the dam, people definitely shouldn’t be burning on top of the dam.

“People should not be interfering with the beaver (habitat) without a permit and a good reason.”

Anonymous tips can be submitted through the TIPP line at 1-800-661-0525.