Beavers Bouncing Back

For over a hundred years, you couldn’t find a single beaver in the Tule River Reservation on the western slope of the Sierras north of Bakersfield. Once a common sight, the dam-building creatures were eradicated from the area — and greatly reduced across Northern California — by massive unregulated trapping in the late 19th century that also harmed the local seal, otter, fox, and weasel populations. That changed on June 12, when the Tule River Tribe, in cooperation with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), released a family of seven beavers into the slow-flowing water of the Tule River’s South Fork.

The project was inspired by pre-Columbian paintings of beavers found on boulders in the reservation. The tribe’s desire to return the ecosystem to its former state motivated their decade-long quest to reintroduce the beavers.

This quest dovetailed with the CDFW’s recently established Beaver Restoration Program. The first pilot of the program was a reintroduction of beavers in the fall of 2023 to a valley near Chester, California, owned by the Maidu Summit Consortium, a conservancy working to protect the homeland of the Mountain Maidu tribal people.

The restoration program has its roots in a broader reevaluation of beavers, previously scorned as pests for gnawing down trees, flooding rivers, and pilfering crops. Now the animals are increasingly being recognized as helpful natural terraformers, bringing wide-ranging benefits to the ecosystems they inhabit. When allowed to build their dams, beavers are a great boon to waterways, combating erosion, improving water quality, and managing floods. The wetlands they create can impede wildfires and provide a habitat for endangered species. 

Experts believe the Tule River reintroduction may provide a habitat for endangered species such as the foothill and southern mountain yellow-legged frogs, western pond turtles, and two bird species: the least Bell’s vireo, and southwestern willow flycatcher. Even when beaver and human ambitions for an area are at odds, undesirable beaver behavior can often be prevented through non-lethal means, such as caging trees, painting trees with a mixture of paint and sand, and draining ponds with a fenced-off pipe.

About a week after the release of three adults, one adolescent, and three kits into the Tule River, two additional beavers were released near the reservation’s Miner Creek, and more will be released over the next few years. From the most recent reports, the initial colony of beavers has remained together and close to their release site on Eagle Creek.

“I’m very happy to see [the beavers] come home and it’s going to be wonderful to watch them do their thing,” said Kenneth McDarment, a Tule River Tribe member and former tribal councilman. “People will be educated even more by seeing the work that they do and the benefits they bring to the environment.” CDFW’s Beaver Restoration Program is currently looking to expand and is taking translocation project proposals from land managers and land owners.