Beaver Restoration Updates

CDFW Beaver Restoration Program to Host Project Proposal Application Workshop

Fri, 11 Apr 2025 13:40:00 GMT

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Beaver Restoration Program invites you to an informational meeting outlining the process for developing and submitting a Beaver Restoration Project Proposal (PDF). The meeting will be held virtually via webinar on Monday, May 12, 2025, from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. This meeting is intended for landowners and land managers, including but not limited to Tribal, Federal, State, Local, or private, who are interested in receiving translocated beavers on their property for the purposes of re-establishing local beaver populations and facilitating restoration of the ecosystem.

The Beaver Restoration Program will highlight the different types of restoration projects, how to self-assess a property for project suitability and prepare a detailed proposal, discuss habitat improvements that can help prepare a site to support beaver establishment, the Program’s process for selecting projects, factors that may limit or preclude beaver restoration projects, and translocation agreement requirements. The webinar will involve a presentation followed by an opportunity for attendees to ask questions related to the application and selection process.

Background information on beaver restoration projects is available on CDFW's Beaver page, under "Beaver Translocation Projects," and we welcome the advance submission of questions to BeaverRestoration@wildlife.ca.gov.

To join the meeting, please use the following Zoom link. The meeting details, agenda, and instructions for attendance will be published on CDFW's Beaver page no later than May 2, 2025.

CDFW Sees Ecosystem Engineers at Work in Beaver Restoration Pilot Projects

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 15:25:23 GMT

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) set out on its mission one-and-a-half years ago to begin returning beavers to watersheds throughout their native range in the state. Since then, the translocated beavers have begun their work as ecosystem engineers, initiating the restoration of wetlands and building resilience to the effects of climate change such as drought and wildfire.

Today, CDFW announces the release of a status report (PDF) on the translocated beavers and restoration sites, summarizing project successes, lessons learned, and next steps for beaver restoration in California. The status report is accompanied by a video update on the translocated beavers, CDFW’s post-release monitoring activities, and the ecosystem restoration progress made within the pilot projects.

Between October 2023 and September 2024, CDFW placed 28 beavers in the Sierra Nevada at five release sites within two pilot projects, which were launched in partnership with the Tule River Tribe in Southern California and the Maidu Summit Consortium in Northern California.

The translocated beavers have since produced two litters of kits and built dams at three of the release sites. At the most productive release site, beavers have begun to dig a network of canals, reconnected the stream with its floodplain and increased the surface water area by approximately 23%.

In 2022, as part of the state’s Initiative to Expand Nature-Based Solutions, CDFW created the Beaver Restoration Program to better understand where, when and how beavers, long thought of as a nuisance species, can be utilized to restore ecosystems and habitats in California. That knowledge will allow CDFW and the state of California to effectively utilize beavers as a nature-based solution in restoring and conserving habitats and watersheds.

“The Beaver Restoration Program was formed because we recognize the value that beavers can provide on a landscape,” said CDFW Beaver Restoration Program Supervisor Molly Alves. “We are putting beavers back into those portions of their historic range where they can build dams and create wetlands that protect our landscape, wildlife and people from climate change like drought and wildfire.”

In the Maidu Summit Consortium’s Tásmam Koyóm valley, which was burned over by the Dixie Fire in 2021, Alves pointed out that since beavers were placed there in October 2023, both available water and wetland habitat have been expanded by the busy beavers. They built a 100-meter dam across the wetland complex — the largest dam in the area that is just downstream from where the beavers decided to place their lodge. Beavers build dams that hold deeper water to allow for predator avoidance and increase the abundance of and access to preferred food sources.

To date, survival of the translocated beavers is estimated to be between 40-60%, with the primary causes of mortality being predation and illnesses related to underlying conditions (e.g., pneumonia) and capture-related stressors.

“Beavers used to be everywhere, but sadly that is no longer the case,” said CDFW Director Charlton H. Bonham. “Our history treated beavers as nuisances, and we removed them from the landscape. In the past year CDFW working with the Tule River Tribe and the Maidu Summit Consortium brought beavers home to places they’ve been absent over 100 years.

“Beavers are nature’s Swiss Army knife. The things they can do are amazing. We are finding in some of our scientific work that when beavers are on the landscape in the Sierra, the way they can create wet meadows serves as a fire break that can slow down or even stop catastrophic wildfire,” added Director Bonham.

CDFW’s status report also details the process for submitting beaver restoration project proposals (i.e., translocation requests), identifying priority projects for future implementation, and selecting beavers for translocation. Additionally, to better understand the current distribution of beavers in California, CDFW is asking for the public’s participation through an online Beaver Observation Survey Tool.

CDFW Now Accepting Beaver Restoration Project Proposals

Fri, 22 Mar 2024 12:50:44 GMT

CDFW's Beaver Restoration Program (BRP) is currently implementing its first two pilot translocation projects with the Maidu Summit Consortium and Tule River Tribe. Moving forward, the BRP anticipates conducting three types of translocation projects: 1) external requests on public and private lands, 2) internal projects on CDFW lands, and 3) CDFW-proposed or -supported, large-scale/multi-landowner collaborations in priority watersheds.

The BRP has created a process for the submission of external project proposals and is now soliciting for project proposals. To propose a beaver translocation project, landowners, or land managers acting on their behalf, are asked to submit fundamental property and project information using the project proposal form below, and additional information spreadsheet when applicable (e.g., for projects involving multiple collaborating landowners or numerous parcels).

Beaver Restoration Project Proposal form (PDF)
Additional Project Information spreadsheet (when applicable)

The BRP anticipates a large, initial influx of project proposals; however, given seasonal constraints and the workload associated with the completion of each project, only a finite number of projects can be implemented each year. In 2024, the BRP is conducting a large-scale beaver reintroduction pilot project with the Tule River Tribe and also seeks an additional 1-2 projects for implementation in this calendar year. To reach implementation, all potential projects will require [CDFW-conducted] site assessments, ground truthing, and a thorough evaluation of habitat suitability and potentials for conflicts and risks, with each viable project ultimately culminating in a comprehensive capture and translocation plan that is consistent with CDFW’s Conservation Translocation Policy. As such, the BRP will utilize a project prioritization strategy to rank proposals and determine which projects to prioritize for further evaluation and potential implementation each year based on the ecological benefits they have the potential to yield.

Not all project proposals will be deemed viable due to various potential constraints, and others may be high priority but require an extended planning period due to project sensitivities or issues requiring remediation. Projects not selected in the current year, will remain under active consideration for the following year(s). When applicable, the BRP will communicate with applicants regarding:

any potential conflicts that would preclude a project from implementation,
habitat improvements that may be necessary to support beaver establishment,
concerns about potential human-wildlife conflict that requires greater coordination and contingency planning,
ecological scenarios that may require an experimental approach, or
any other unique circumstances that warrant additional planning and coordination efforts

This information and the associated project proposal forms are also posted to CDFW's Beaver webpage under the Beaver Translocation Projects section. We encourage any applicants planning to propose a large-scale/watershed-level project to contact the BRP when developing the project proposal. For any other questions about project development, please contact the BRP at BeaverRestoration@wildlife.ca.gov

CDFW Conducts First Beaver Conservation Translocation in Nearly 75 Years

Wed, 13 Dec 2023 13:26:01 GMT

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has launched the initial phase of its beaver translocation activities, recently conducting the first beaver conservation release in nearly 75 years. Working with the Maidu Summit Consortium, CDFW released a family of seven beavers into Plumas County, in a location that is known to the tribal community as Tásmam Koyóm.

Watch the video commemorating the Beaver Restoration Program's first beaver translocation(YouTube)

The new family group of beavers join a single resident beaver in the valley with the ultimate objective of re-establishing a breeding population that will maintain the mountain meadow ecosystem, its processes and the habitat it provides for numerous other species.

Humans have so admired the skilled work of beavers they have spent millions of dollars trying to replicate the benefits they create. Thanks to Governor Gavin Newsom’s leadership and the State Legislature for supporting that leadership with funding in the state budget (PDF), beaver restoration is now part of a larger effort to help mitigate the impacts of wildfires, climate change and drought.

“Thanks to the leadership of our tribal partners and years of preparation, beavers are returning to their original homeland around the state,” said Governor Gavin Newsom. “California is restoring wildlife and critical habitat by working hand-in-hand with the tribes who have stewarded these lands.”

The historic release represents the first phase of CDFW’s North American beaver (Castor canadensis) restoration project, releasing beavers into the waters on the ancestral lands of the Mountain Maidu people. Soon to follow is a beaver reintroduction effort on the Tule River Reservation in the southern Sierra Nevada.

“Beavers help retain water on the landscape, which increases groundwater recharge, improves summer baseflows, extends seasonal flows and increases fuel moisture during wildfire season, effectively creating green belts that can serve as wildfire buffers or breaks and provide refugia for wildlife,” said CDFW Director Charlton H. Bonham, who joined the historic beaver release. “We look forward to duplicating these efforts on the Tule River Reservation in the southern Sierra Nevada mountains this spring.”

“This is the first time in decades our state agencies have reintroduced beaver into its original homelands with the leadership of our tribal partners at the Maidu Summit Consortium,” said California Natural Resource Agency Secretary Wade Crowfoot who also attended the beaver release. “Beaver relocation will help both to restore the environment and preserve traditional culture of our tribal partners who have stewarded these lands since time immemorial. I’m excited to watch how beaver will improve the health of landscapes in coming decades and support traditional lifeways for our diverse tribal communities.”

The translocation follows multiple years of site preparation that ensured adequate beaver habitat that provides protection from predators and can support beaver population establishment. These preliminary efforts were conducted through Maidu Summit Consortium’s collaboration with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Occidental Arts & Ecology Center’s WATER Institute, Lassen National Forest, Plumas Corporation, Swift Water Design, Symbiotic Restoration, Feather River Land Trust, The Sierra Fund, CalPBR Network and several others.

“Getting to this moment of our first reintroduction really is a product of so much leadership from so many people. We would not be here without the Tule River Tribe of California who have been out front advocating for these actions for years, tribes around the state like Karuk, and, of course, Maidu Summit Consortium leaders. The future looks much better because of these leaders,” Bonham said.

In alignment with CDFW’s new beaver depredation policy, the translocated beaver family was relocated from Sutter County, where their activity was damaging lands supporting several threatened or endangered species. To date, the entire family group, which consists of a breeding pair and their offspring, has survived. After exploring miles of habitat throughout the valley and locating the resident beaver’s territory, the family settled into the release area and has established shelter for the impending winter. The translocated beavers and receiving ecosystems will be monitored for multiple years following their release to assess the population, movement, habitat utilization, behavior and activity, potential conflicts, mortalities and the need for additional translocations, as well as the ecological changes that result from beaver engineering on the landscape.

For more information about CDFW’s beaver management and restoration activities, or to obtain future updates about the translocated beavers, visit wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Mammals/Beaver.