Los Angeles Times

Beavers could aid the state’s ecosystem

Beavers are precious to the Tule River Indian Tribe. They are woven into the California tribe’s stories and appear in ancient pictograph­s painted by ancestors on the walls of a rock shelter in the Sierra Nevada.

But when nine of the furry rodents recently slid out of crates and slipped into waterways on the Tule River Reservatio­n, they returned to a habitat where they hadn’t been seen in nearly a century.

A family of beavers — three adults, one subadult and three babies, known as “kits” — were released into the South Fork Tule River watershed on June 12, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said. Two other beavers were released into Miner Creek on June 17.

The department conducted the releases in the foothills of the southern Sierra in partnershi­p with the tribe, whose 55,356-acre reservatio­n is based in Portervill­e, Calif., in Tulare County.

Beavers were a common sight in parts of the Sierra before the arrival of Europeans, but by the 20th century their numbers had been decimated by fur trappers and eradicatio­n efforts.

A decade ago, tribal leaders called for the animals to be returned, driven by traditiona­l Indigenous knowledge about beavers’ importance to the ecosystem — and inspired by the 500- to 1,000-year-old beaver images left at the Yokuts village site known as Painted Rock.

In 2022, the Fish and Wildlife Department received state funding to start a restoratio­n program to prepare sites in California for the semiaquati­c animals.

Beavers aid the environmen­t by building dams that help to keep landscapes well-hydrated and more resilient in droughts and wildfires. That enhanced water retention could also protect the Tule River Indian Tribe’s drinking water supply — 80% of which comes from the river’s watershed, Fish and Wildlife officials said.

“We’ve been through numerous droughts over the years — we were wondering how we can conserve, save water, get water here on our lands,” Kenneth McDarment, a Tule River Tribe member and former tribal councilman, said in a Fish and Wildlife statement. “The answer was in our pictograph­s.”

California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot said the beaver program was the result of an unpreceden­ted effort by the state to not only steward the environmen­t but also support tribal sovereignt­y.

Elders from the Tachi Yokut and Tubatulaba­l tribes joined an elder from the Tule River Indian Tribe in a blessing ceremony to ready the habitat for the beavers’ arrival in June.

In video captured by the Fish and Wildlife Department, some of the beavers, which were brought in from state-owned land in Merced County, can be seen checking out their new digs in the 6,000-foot-elevation Sierra meadowland.

The slicked-back fur on the beavers’ heads and backs glistens in the sun as the agile swimmers slice the murky waters past submerged evergreen leaves, drifting twigs and shrubs. Possible constructi­on materials?

Beavers released in the fall by Fish and Wildlife in partnershi­p with the Indigenous-led Maidu Summit Consortium in Plumas County wasted no time building lodges to live in and dams to protect themselves from predators and to store food, a department spokeswoma­n said. Today those structures, in the tribal community known as Tásmam Koyóm, are large and welldevelo­ped.

“Our past is one where we treated these animals and others as varmints, and our culture over time ran them off the landscape,” said Charlton H. Bonham, department director. “That can’t be our future.”