Video Credit: California Department of Fish and Wildlife

This fall, the California Dept. of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) and Butte County Resource Conservation District (BCRCD) hit an important milestone in their project Butte Creek House Ecological Reserve Beaver Conservation Translocations with the release of 5 beavers onto the CDFW property at Butte Creek House. This is the first time beavers have been released on a CDFW property.

The Butte Creek watershed is in need of these ecosystem engineers. The reserve is located at the top of the Butte Creek watershed and is a headwater meadow. After the past decade of devastating wildfires decimating deeply forested areas, this is some of the only quality habitat for wildlife left in the area. The establishment of beavers in the area and their construction of dams, will help improve the retention of water on the landscape and will repair channel incisions, reconnect streams to the floodplain, and increase riparian vegetation and habitat for both wetland- and riparian wildlife. This was also help increase the riparian buffer zone during wildfires. These benefits will stretch downstream into salmon habitat and all the way into the valley.

Long before the beaver release, CDFW and BCRCD worked for years on designing, permitting, and implementing the project. They built several beaver dam analogs which are a human-made, low-tech structures built in a stream that mimic the form and function of a natural beaver dam. These help provide the initial habitat needed for beavers and work in the same way beaver dams do to slow down the flow of water. Now that beavers have been relocated to the property, they will use, maintain, build upon and expand these analogs – without human intervention needed.

The beavers recently released were all outfitted with tracking tags and will be monitored for population establishment. There will also be monitoring of ecosystem parameters to evaluate the overall success of the project. We’re excited to see how this project creates positive change for our watershed and provides a blueprint for ecosystem improvement through careful planning of wildlife translocations.

Source: CEQA ‘Butte Creek House Ecological Reserve Beaver Conservation Translocations’ and video from California Department of Fish and Wildlife