Jenny Frithsen, environmental program manager for Friends of the Yampa, on Wednesday scanned wood sticks piled on the Library Hall floor, seeking the perfect piece of the puzzle in her quest to accurately re-create a beaver lodge.

“It is important to build on the momentum that the (Bud Werner) Library has going with the community read of (the book) ‘Eager’ that has the potential to reach so many people,” Frithsen said of the partnership between the Bud Werner Library, Friends of the Yampa and Yampatika.

The groups have joined forces in hopes of raising awareness about the importance of beavers through this year’s One Book Steamboat event. On this day in particular, the goal was to build a simulated beaver lodge — the structure normally located near dams where beavers live — as an educational tool.

The human-made beaver lodge, which allows people to see both the interior and exterior of the lodge, will be used as part of the library’s One Book Steamboat event that aims to educate the public about these often-maligned creatures.

People will be able to get their first look at what the completed beaver lodge looks like on Thursday, ahead of a panel discussion featuring ranchers, wildlife biologists, Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials, the Colorado Crane Conservation Coalition and Friends of the Yampa, as well as Forrest Cuch, Ute author, scholar, elder, environmental activist and spiritual leader.

The panel discussion is part of the One Book Steamboat event centered around author Ben Goldfarb’s book “Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers.”

The panel conversation, from 6:30-8 p.m. Thursday, will take place in Library Hall. Organizers said the event will include conversation and collaboration surrounding future beaver encounters, drought resiliency, fire mitigation, biodiversity and co-habitation in the Yampa Valley.

Other events include a One Book Community Conversation from 6:30-7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 12 in Library Hall. The display will remain at the library through the final One Book event, at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 18, when Ben Goldfarb, author of “Eager,” hosts a talk, also in Library Hall.

“They are a keystone species, and yet we treat them like pests,” Frithsen said of beavers. “No other native species do we so freely kill and eliminate from the environment, and I think this is a very powerful opportunity to spread awareness on the ecosystem services they provide and the resiliency that they can give to our ecosystem in a changing climate.”

On Wednesday, Frithsen, the environmental program manager for Friends of the Yampa, worked alongside Jennie Lay with the Bud Werner Library and Yampatika’s Kristen Jespersen, Sarah Boerger and Hailey Shoptaugh to construct the beaver lodge inside Library Hall using sticks collected from the Williams Ditch near Hayden.

“We got the beaver chew from Parks and Wildlife,” said Lay. “This is a human simulation, obviously, but it is a chance for people to see what it looks like, and also a resource that’s now in our community that these amazing environmental educators will also use at Fall Fest and the Yampa River Festival, as well as summer camps.”

Lay said that Jennifer Williams at the Nature Conservancy helped collect the beaver chew, while Kipp Rillos and the Steamboat Springs High School carpentry program helped engineer and build the support for the lodge and a table that supports the display and allows people to see the inside. Colorado Parks and Wildlife also loaned a mounted beaver as part of the display.

“Our mission is to inspire environmental stewardship through education … We want our participants to be immersed in the subject matter that we’re discussing,” said Jespersen, who is the executive director of Yampakita. “We focus on environmental science, but also just being in nature and benefiting from that experience and using that to motivate them to better understand how we can protect our natural resources. Building something like this really allows for that interactive, experiential learning opportunity for all ages, because that is the audience that we attempt to reach.”