Beaver Re-introduction

Relocating beaver to Boulder Mountain involves more than just a catch and release. Utah’s DWR Beaver Management Plan calls for considering
“the site characteristics of the locations where beaver will be relocated/re-introduced” in terms of:
• sufficient vegetation to support a beaver population
• potential for depredation problems in the new location
• affect on fish habitat/population and migration
Beaver that are properly located will contribute to a healthier, more natural mountain ecosystem. Beaver-dammed water stays up on the mountain longer and is released more slowly downstream, rather than as gushing floods. The expanded water table also fosters new vegetative growth and riparian areas.

To this end, a total of four trainings sessions are being conducted throughout Summer 2010 on how to assess areas for beaver reintroduction. These multi-day training sessions, sponsored by Grand Canyon Trust, cover many aspects of beaver-related work on rivers and watersheds in the Escalante Drainage. By summer’s end, we will have competed habitat assessments on Deer Creek Lake drainage, Chris Lake drainage, East Fork of Boulder Creek, Pine Creek, North Creek, and more. The data collected on these workshops will be used by the Division of Wildlife Resources for relocating the first of many beaver to this area—hopefully by Summer 2011.

Another aspect of preparation will be to train local trappers on techniques for live-trapping beaver.  Beaver tend to stay in family units and will migrate to new habitat when they begin to feel overcrowded. This is fine on the mountain; it can become a challenge when the migration occurs in an irrigation stream or drainage. Rather than killing the very beaver we are trying to reintroduce, the live-trappers can be called to catch the troublemakers and relocate them in more suitable terrain.

In conjunction with the beaver assessments, another related training we have undertaken is the Rapid Stream Riparian Assessment (RSRA). This assessment enables us to better understand the most productive and important natural resources we have on public and private lands: stream and river corridors. Because of the ecological importance of these riparian areas and their heavy use by humans,this method of study detects streams at risk. This is particularly important in semi-arid regions like the Colorado Plateau, including the Escalante River Drainage. Here, the river corridors support the richest and most diverse communities of plants and animals in the region and must monitored and protected.

Many thanks to the Wild Utah Projects and the Grand Canyon Trust for staging these important (volunteer) data gathering trips.

Utah's 2010-2020 Beaver Management Plan: PDF

Beavers in King County, WA:
http://webspinners.com/riparian/GreenLine/
V09-2/BeaverDam.html

From the Colorado Riparian Association:
http://www.kingcounty.gov/environment/animals
AndPlants/beavers/science.aspx