![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-2287305644-480x320.jpg\"\/)
\n Young little Eurasian beaver, Castor fiber at a river in Munich, Bavaria in Germany, Europe(Getty Images\/Rudolf Ernst)<\/p>\n
Maryland leaders say they\u2019re confident, but not yet certain that the waters around Hunting Creek Lake in Cunningham Falls State Park, are safe again. They want to be certain before they open up that area of the park again to swimmers, hikers and others.<\/p>\n
\n Young little Eurasian beaver, Castor fiber at a river in Munich, Bavaria in Germany, Europe(Getty Images\/Rudolf Ernst)<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-2287305644-780x520.jpg\"\/)
\n Young little Eurasian beaver, Castor fiber at a river in Munich, Bavaria in Germany, Europe(Getty Images\/Rudolf Ernst)<\/p>\n
Maryland leaders say they\u2019re confident, but not yet certain that the waters around Hunting Creek Lake in Cunningham Falls State Park are safe again. They want to be certain of that before they open up that area of the park again to swimmers, hikers and others.<\/p>\n
Initially, the lake was closed for swimming after someone was attacked by a beaver that later tested positive for rabies. A second similar attack prompted the area around the lake to be closed off.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe feel reasonably confident that the lake is safe. However, I think in this instance we need to corroborate that,\u201d said Joshua Tabora, a furbearer biologist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. \u201cWe don\u2019t have a prospective date for reopening, and we are beginning to talk about what benchmarks we need to hit in order to guarantee the safety of the public.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tabora said the department is in its \u201cfact-finding phase\u201d and they don\u2019t have all the information needed to guarantee that there is no risk to public health and safety.<\/p>\n
He said beavers are rarely, if ever, associated with the rabies virus, though their behaviors make it likely that one of the beavers involved in a recent attack gave the virus to the other.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeavers aren\u2019t what you\u2019d think of as like your typical vector species, which would be something like a raccoon, a striped skunk, or a red fox,\u201d Tabora said. \u201cPresumably, how this spillover case happened is that\u2026one of these infected beavers previously would have had an encounter with one of those primary vector species, like perhaps a raccoon because they share similar habitats.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said animals can spread the virus through salivary contact, so the nearly constant grooming that behaviors conduct on themselves and each other is the likely mode of transmission of the disease.<\/p>\n
The nature of the Frederick County park, with a creek that\u2019s not very rapid and a lake that\u2019s pretty isolate, along with the way beavers tend to live, lead Tabora to believe it\u2019s likely those are the only two beavers to contract rabies.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s entirely plausible that the two animals involved in the attacks are the only animals in the area,\u201d Tabora said. \u201cWe\u2019re doing a lot of follow-up surveys and on-the-ground work to confirm that is the case, and we\u2019re trying to be as thorough as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n