'Shot Off The Landscape,' Beavers Get Historic 2nd Chance In CA Wild
PLUMAS COUNTY, CA — California Fish and Wildlife’s Chuck Bonham said he “got a little choked up and teary-eyed” but was also filled with hope for the planet as he watched seven beavers slide into a pond on the ancestral lands of the Mountain Maidu people.
The beavers were home, back where they belong. And they had been sorely missed.
Bonham’s agency teamed with the Maidu Summit Consortium for the October release of a family of seven beavers, two parents and their kits, in the 2,325-acre Tásmam Koyóm valley. It was a historic release, the first of its kind in 75 years.
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The family joined a single beaver in the valley, a lone survivor of centuries of common disregard for the keystone species. Scientists say tht despite a reputation as a nuisance species, beavers are industrious ecological engineers of the systems that support other life around them, both plant and animal, and help build up resilience to climate change.
Widlife and tribal officials gave beavers due respect for their role in healthy ecologies, a dramatic shift from the early 1800s fur rush when they were valued only for their thick, chestnut-colored fur and had been hunted to near extinction. At one point, according to California Fish and Wildlife, beavers lived in nearly every stream in North America with an estimated population of 100 to 200 million. Today, there are only about 10 or 15 million beavers in North America.
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“There’s a part of our history where we viewed a lot of animals as nuisance, varmint, and we shot them off the landscape, from bison all the way down to beaver and many things in between,” Bonham said in a video of the beaver release. “And when you bring them home, you’ll restore your ecology. You’ll get your healthy functioning again in your meadows, in your alpine streams, in your coastal estuaries.”
The beavers were brought to the valley in portable kennels set at the pond edge and allowed to crawl out on their own. Some immediately took to the water and swam off, others were more hesitant.
One, a 2-month-old kit, stayed in his kennel until Valerie Cook, the beaver restoration program manager for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, gently lifted him out and placed him in the grass. After a time, one of the beaver’s siblings returned to shore, hoisted its younger sibling on its back, and together they explored their new home.
The young beaver knew exactly what he was doing and “was waiting for someone to give him a ride on their tail,” Cook told SFGate.
“You just saw this tiny brown furball, this little nugget, catch a ride on the back of his sibling’s tail, and it looked like he was surfing,” Cook told the news outlet. “I don’t think it set in for days afterward, but that moment will go down as one of the highlights of my entire career. I think we were very proud of what we had done, and really optimistic about the potential that this represents for us and the good we think we can do moving forward.”
Within 20 minutes of their release, the orange-toothed mammals — unlike other rodents that have magnesium in their tooth enamel, beavers have iron, which strengthens their teeth — were already at working together on their new lodges, where they’ll spend the winter together.
Beavers are social animals who live in families and work cooperatively. Parents bond for life, and their offspring, the kits from the current breeding season and in some cases offspring of either sex from previous seasons, remaining together. A single mating pair can live to be about 16 years old and rear a litter of kits — usually just few, but as many as eight — a year once the female reaches maturity, at abut 2½ years.
The survival rate of kits is about 45 percent, which makes rebuilding the population a long and challenging process. But the architects of the historic beaver release are optimistic the beaver population will rise and, with it, the ecological health of the Tásmam Koyóm valley. With beaver in it, they believe, the valley will retain the spring snowpack melt for longer periods of time, creating healthier, more abundant rivers and streams in years to come and more habitat for other species that share the valley.
“There is a lot to be discouraged and alarmed about in our world, whether it’s climate change and the loss of plants and animals off our planet,” Wade Crowfoot, secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency, said during the beaver release. “But when we take action, we maintain our hope to restore, to regenerate our natural worlds.”
The natural skills that make beavers ecological heroes in the natural world put them at odds with pioneers and even current landowners because their dam building causes tree damage and flooding. Among the Maidu people, though, their release was seen as a long-awaited homecoming.
“They’re our little cousins, and we’re going to pray for them to be safe, to have a good life here in this beautiful environment,” Allen Lowry of the Maidu Summit Consortium said in the video. “And so, we’re so happy to be able to release them here. And we pray that they will find a good home, make a good home forever here.”
“Today just feels real good,” Bonham said in the video. “We’re bringing something back home. We’re returning an animal home.”
He added, “And this could be forever. And it’s the right thing to do.”
Watch the beaver release in the California Department of Fish and Wildlife video below.
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