![]() But he yearned to leave an enduring legacy, and in 2008 his opportunity -arrived. Since arriving in the Okanagan in 1989, he’d focused on birds, installing nesting platforms for owls. McKinstry established 16 colonies, but he had to release an average of 21 beavers per site. Newly released beavers, which must navigate unfamiliar terrain without a sheltering lodge, are especially vulnerable. Beavers - “fat, slow, smelly packages of meat,” in McKinstry’s words - make delectable meals for coyotes, cougars and bears. Ranchers, their hayfields lush thanks to rising water tables, rejoiced.īut success had its costs. Deer, moose and elk flourished in revived wetlands. A decade later, Idaho officials parachuted 76 beavers into drought-afflicted areas.įew latter-day biologists advanced the cause as far as the University of Wyoming’s Mark McKinstry, who relocated 350 beavers between 19 to bolster riparian areas. In the 1930s, the federal government employed 600 beavers alongside the Civilian Conservation Corps to control erosion. Not until the 20th century did we begin to regard the creatures as more than pelts. Fur trappers pillaged North America’s rivers, slashing beaver populations from more than 60 million to 100,000. Humankind shares a sordid history with Castor canadensis. But first, they must induce the wandering rodents to stay put - and Woodruff has come closest to mastering that art. While Northwestern ecologists were once content to let the critters recolonize creeks on their own, today’s land managers are surgically transplanting them to the places they’re needed most. Since the project launched, six Washington entities, from tribes to nonprofits to state agencies, have followed its lead. “We want beavers up every stream, in all the headwaters.” On this sweltering July morning, he watches as wildlife scientists Catherine Means and Katie Weber hoist Chomper and Sandy, now caged, into the truck that will convey them to the Okanogan-Wenatchee. “We want these guys everywhere,” says Woodruff, a white-stubbled Forest Service biologist with an evangelical gleam in his blue eyes. They provide rearing grounds for young fish, limit flooding and keep ephemeral creeks flowing year-round. They spread rivers across floodplains, allowing water to percolate into aquifers. Beaver wetlands filter sediments and pollutants from streams. Hoping to adapt to climate change? Take two beavers and check back in a year.ĭecades of research support Woodruff’s enthusiasm. Want to recharge groundwater? Add a beaver. Need to enhance salmon runs? There’s a beaver for that. Why would Washington invite ditch-clogging nuisances - so loathed that federal Wildlife Services killed 22,000 nationwide in 2014 - into its wildlands? To hear Methow project coordinator Kent Woodruff tell it, beavers are landscape miracle drugs. Rather than calling lethal trappers, a growing contingent notifies the Methow crew, which captures and relocates the offenders to the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest and state land. These beavers have damaged trees and irrigation infrastructure, and landowners want them gone. Forest Service, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Methow Salmon Recovery Foundation that, since 2008, has moved more than 300 beavers around the eastern Cascades. The lovers are wards of the Methow Valley Beaver Project, a partnership between the U.S. So her handlers transferred her to Chomper’s enclosure, where she nestled among woodchips and dug into apple slices. Sandy had first been paired with an inmate named Hendrix, but they lacked chemistry. She’s a lustrous red-blonde, incarcerated for killing cottonwoods. He’s an inquisitive 44-pound male, busted for felling apple trees. When Chomper and Sandy met in a concrete pen in Winthrop, Washington, it was love at first sniff.
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