SLO Beaver Brigade

(From the CDFW Beaver Webpage )

The CDFW Beaver Restoration Program is updating the current range map of beavers in California. To help improve this dataset and our understanding of the current range of beavers in California, the BRP is requesting submissions of additional beaver observation data.

Beavers were once one of the most widely distributed mammals in North America. However, by the late 1800s beavers were eliminated from much of their range due to unregulated trapping for the fur trade. In California, beaver populations were further impacted during the 1900s by habitat loss and human-wildlife conflict. With the growing recognition of the beaver’s role in ecosystem restoration and conservation and CDFW’s budding beaver restoration objectives, a better understanding of the current and historic range of Northa American beavers in California is needed. As such, the Beaver Restoration Program (BRP) is undertaking an effort to compile North American beaver (Castor canadensis) presence data from throughout the state to update CDFW’s current range map for beavers in California.

No comprehensive beaver population survey has been conducted in California. As such, the map below represents the current known range of beavers in California according to the best data currently available to CDFW.

To help improve this dataset and our understanding of the current range of beavers in California, the BRP is requesting submissions of additional beaver observation data. If you would like to submit a beaver observation (including their dams and lodges) and contribute to this mapping effort, please report your observation through CDFW’s California Beaver Observation Survey(opens in new tab).

It was quite a highlight for Cooper Lienhart and myself, Audrey Taub, to get to attend and present at the State of the Beaver Conference in Canyonville, Oregon this Nov 13-16, 2023. We were able to hear from the founders of this conference, Stan Petrowski, Leonard & Lois Houston and feel their passion for their watershed and their conviction in the work of the beavers to return health back to their creeks and rivers. They presented decades’ long experience of restoring creeks and relocating beavers back into their habitats. If you want a beaver story, go no further than Stan, Leonard and Lois. Truly inspirational frontline restorationists.

Dr. Suzanne Fouty, another hero in the beaver world who has been instrumental in researching the beavers impact on streams and stream restoration for over 25 years, and how beavers and wolves interact to accelerate stream restoration. Dr. Fouty presented on her efforts to close federally managed public lands to beaver trapping and hunting as a strategic response to the emergencies of climate change and biodiversity loss. She is working tirelessly to shine the light on the often unspoken and unnoticed quantities of beavers that are still being trapped today on public lands all over this country. Even as many dollars, hours and energy is being spent to restore streams to create the conditions for beavers to return, once the beavers do arrive, trappers often remove those very beavers from the watersheds, ultimately limiting the benefits of those restoration efforts.

Kevin Swift of Swift Water Design gave a presentation on his teams efforts at restoring the watershed of Tásmam Koyóm, the ancestral lands of the Mountain Maidu currently owned and maintained by the Maidu Summit Consortium. Using low-tech process-based restoration techniques, his team of restorationists have restored many miles of Yellow Creek and much to their delight, and the ultimate sign of success, have seen the return of beavers back into these restored waterways.

Cristina Valverde of Beavers Taught Salmon to Jump, was seen with camera in hand, always alert to this story of reconnection and the restoration of this connection by beavers, people and indigenous ecological ways. She is a skilled story catcher and is very often at the center of beaver/human activities, capturing the events as they unfold.

So many great moments to share, there will be more to come on this post in the upcoming months.

Visit by 19 high school students from Yarm School in northeastern England to the Atascadero beaver dams, October 24, 2023.

photos by Brittany App

At first, hesitantly dipping their toes in the Salinas River, but ultimately getting their sea legs while witnessing the delights of Beaver habitat, a group of 19 high school students from Yarm in northeastern England and their four instructors toured the Atascadero beaver dams recently with the SLO Beaver Brigade.

Yarm School is an independent day school founded in 1978 in Yarm, North Yorkshire in the North East of England. The trip involved students majoring in biology and political science and gave the participants rich opportunities for experiencing the intersection of environmental issues and public policy on a 10-day trip through the Golden State.

Audrey Taub, Executive Director and founder of the SLO Beaver Brigade fielded a wide variety of questions from the participants, as she led them through a walk to the local beaver dams. Topics covered during the walk included characteristics of beavers, their diet, habits and dam building, as well as the benefits that beaver dams create: fire refugia, groundwater recharge, carbon sequestration and sediment and pollution capture. Two of beavers’ favorite sources of food, cottonwoods and willows, were easily visible on the walk, as were the beaver chews from these trees that also serve as building blocks for the dams. Students and teachers alike marveled at the quantity of water held back from the dams, as they saw first-hand how beaver dams create lush wetlands and capture water, contributing to the local drinking water supply. Not to be outdone by the SLO Beaver Brigade’s dedication the local watershed, the Yarm School students carried out 15 tires from the side of the River, placed there by local horseback riders and their horses that pulled them from the riverbed.

Yarm School students had a busy agenda during their trip, which included fun and educational activities at points north and south, but several students shared with SLO Beaver Brigade volunteers that the Beaver dam tour was the highlight of their experiences. 

Stephen Edwards of Yarm School stated, “We felt so welcomed, so embraced into the Beaver Brigade project, and so privileged to learn from their  significant insight and experiences.”

Typically after a rain storm, the beavers begin rebuilding their dams within one week to one month after being damaged. This winter though, the beavers didn’t get to begin rebuilding until early June 2023. But the stronger current from this winters rains wasn’t the only obstacle preventing the beavers from rebuilding this year.

As mentioned in an earlier post, and in the SLO Tribune on August 5th, 2023, off roaders have been driving in the Salinas River since their unofficial trails alongside the Salinas River were buried under debris after this winter’s floods. The SLO Beaver Brigade cleared out two of these pre-flooded trails to encourage the off-road vehicles to go around the beaver habitat.

It’s been a tough go for the beavers during this time, as the off-roaders repeatedly ignored the taped off areas and drove over the signs and the fresh starts of beaver activity. Day after day, we would witness fresh beaver building activity, and day after day they would be destroyed.

The only thing encouraging us to continue replacing these signs, day after day, month after month, was the beaver activity happening behind them. It didn’t matter how early in the morning we arrived at the pond, the freshest activity out there was always the beaver signs: fresh drag marks of tree branches crossing the dry river bed and fresh beaver tracks. That is what kept us, and keeps us, heading out there to check on the state of their dams.

We are happy to report, after months of off-roaders driving over beaver habitat and signs, they have finally begun using the side trails around the river. And the beavers have noticed! One beaver family that has been trying since June to rebuild their pond has finally, as of the week of Sept 15th been successful.

Right now, all 3 families of beavers in Atascadero have built at least one dam each, allowing them protection from predators as they harvest willows, cottonwood branches and other plant material for their food. 3 times as much water retention, fire break potential and water filtration is happening.

Thank you off-roaders for taking the side trails!