Bringing Back Beavers
A Potential Partner for Improving Water Quality and Preventing Wildfire
by Lisa Ludwigsen
A custom cowboy hat constructed of fine beaver fur will run you around $1,500 in downtown Santa Fe. To start the design process, the customer sits in a barber shop-like chair where a metal contraption is placed onto the head to calibrate each unique detail. (Despite appearances, I hear it only looks painful.) Though the beaver’s coarse outer fur is also used for hats, it is the soft underlayer of beaver fur that felts into a durable, waterproof, insulating material that also holds its shape. Most hats these days use rabbit, hare, or wool, so a beaver felt hat is a premium luxury.
It is precisely those superior qualities that led to the near extinction of beavers from North America and fundamentally changed the landscape across the continent, beginning over 500 years ago.
When Europeans arrived in North America in the 1500s, it is estimated that beavers could be found every two miles of a flowing waterway. According to the book Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America, by Leila Philip, before the fur trade began, beavers were as common as squirrels.
It was easy pickings for fur traders. Great fortunes were made as pelts were sold and shipped throughout the growing American colonies and across Europe, especially since beavers had been hunted out in Europe as early as the 1300s. Beaver hats were ubiquitous. Take a look at an old black and white photo of men wearing tall top hats or bowlers and be assured that most of those hats were made from beaver.
While Native Americans managed beaver populations to ensure longevity, Europeans settlers shared no such concern. By the late 1800s, the American beaver population was decimated, ending the lucrative market and significantly altering the topography across the continent. The good news is that beavers are resilient, and successful reintroduction and conservation efforts, starting way back in the early 1900s, are restoring ecosystems and addressing impacts of droughts, fires, and even flooding, especially in the arid West.
Beavers’ ability to transform a running stream into a biologically diverse ecosystem is unmatched in nature. They alter the terrain by slowing the flow of water, spreading it out, and sinking it into the ground. While building strong, protective shelters, beavers transform streams into ponds, creating meadows, wetlands, and marshes that hold water on the surface and serve as important wildlife habitat. As the water slows and spreads, erosion is decreased, water tables rise, and aquifers are recharged. As a keystone species, their presence increases biodiversity, and they are necessary to keep an ecosystem healthy.
I recall hiking around a glacial lake in the Eastern Sierra wondering “who’s chopping down trees way back here?” I thought for a minute that I might find a cabin. Lifting my gaze a few degrees, I spotted the beaver lodge, which I had walked past and mistaken for a pile of debris washed from upstream. Yet another lesson for me in paying attention to my surroundings and looking a bit deeper!
Beavers are the largest North American rodent. They can hold their breath underwater for 15 minutes, are dexterous, and live in family units of parents and offspring up to a couple of years old. In times of scarcity, the offspring return to help with the work of the group. Beavers’ unique flat tails are used for balance and stability in and out of the water, to store fat, and to warn off unwelcome visitors with a loud thwap. They are called landscape architects for good reason. With long orange incisors, hefty rear feet measuring up to 7” long, and five-toed front feet, beavers can cut and drag trees up to 2’ in width and scoop volumes of mud to create impenetrable dams and lodges. They can cut down a 5” willow in three minutes. As vegetarians, they very efficiently eat the inner cambium layer of the tree and use the rest to build dams and lodges.
Though relatively plentiful again in parts of North America, the West still lacks healthy beaver populations. “We’ve worked hard to keep water from just passing through our rangeland,” said Loren Poncia, owner of Stemple Creek Ranch in west Marin County. As a producer of grass-fed, grass-finished beef, Poncia and his crew have planted over 10,000 trees along five miles of Stemple Creek. “We planted the trees, mostly willows, to build habitat and decrease erosion. It’s been a big success. The creek now runs year-round in some places.”
Taking restoration efforts a step further, Poncia is working with California Department of Fish and Wildlife, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and Occidental Arts & Ecology Center (OAEC) WATER Institute to study the potential impacts of introducing beavers to the watershed. “As ranchers, we want to grow forage on our creek-adjacent land, so spreading out the water and slowing the water cycle is very desirable.” The team is installing beaver dam analogues, which are human-made beaver dams, along the creek as a step to determine long term effects. Poncia’s enthusiasm about restoring habitat and reintroducing beavers into the watershed is palpable. Though many people have considered beavers a nuisance and kill them without a second thought, he is part of a growing group of ranchers able to see beavers as integral to a sustainable food system.
It was once thought that beavers were native to only California’s Central Valley and northern mountain watersheds, but research by the OAEC WATER Institute shifted that assumption, which now includes watersheds with traditional coho salmon populations, including the upper reaches of the Eel River in Mendocino County. OAEC is an enthusiastic advocate of restoring beavers to California’s wild and rural spaces. Their efforts include their “Bring Back the Beaver” campaign, created “to improve water supply for humans and the environment and increase resilience to drought and climate change” by including the management of beavers into the state’s policies and regulation.
The Mendocino Conservation District has been monitoring a family of beavers outside of Willits since 2018 as it has grown and flourished. Year-round pools now exist in areas that were seasonal vernal ponds. Those local beavers may be descendants of a relocation program in 58 California counties— including Mendocino, Napa, and Marin—during the 1940s, which increased statewide populations from a miniscule 1,300 to more than 20,000 by 1950. In some cases, beavers were parachuted in from low-flying airplanes.
“Slow it, sink it, spread it, store it, share it,” was coined by Brock Dolman, cofounder of the WATER Institute, to explain how we should consider our relationship with water in the West. Wet and moist places don’t readily burn, and beavercreated wetlands actually hold excess water underneath the surface during flooding events.
Beavers are captivating creatures, perhaps because of their unique appearance or their tenacious work ethic and impressive results. Understanding their beneficial impacts on our water quantity and quality, as well as our resilience to wildfire, can transform public opinion of them from a destructive nuisance to a productive partner in maintaining a healthy ecosystem.
Learn more:
• Beaver Land, How One Weird Rodent Made America by Leila Philip
• Beavers: A Rodent Success Story, CBS Sunday Morning
• Bring Back the Beaver Campaign, Occidental Arts & Ecology Center
www.oaec.org/projects/bring-back-the-beaver-campaign/
Cover photo by Scott Younkin courtesy of Pexels
Photo top left by Lisa Ludwigsen. Photo top right from game camera operated by Mendocino County Resource Conservation District: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR5K0y15f8w