Godofredo A. Vásquez / AP, file
A beaver sits on a rock in Napa Creek, Wednesday, July 19, 2023, in Napa, Calif.
Thursday, June 27, 2024 | 2 a.m.
A family of the largest rodents in North America were released in a California watershed “for the first time in over a century,” officials said.
Beavers were once staples of the watershed on the Tule River Indian Reservation, and they were featured in pictographs dating back about 500 to 1,000 years, tribe members and state officials said.
“We’ve been through numerous droughts over the years,” Kenneth McDarment, a Tule River Tribe member and past tribal councilman, said in a June 21 news release. “Going through these droughts we were wondering how we can conserve, save water, get water here on our lands. The answer was in our pictographs.”
The project had been in the works for about 10 years until finally, a family of seven beavers was reintroduced, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The first release on June 12 included three kits, three adults and one subadult, followed by two more beavers released June 17, officials said.
The animals can offer significant ecological benefits.
The beavers’ dams will improve water retention on the land by slowing down the flow of the river, which provides the vast majority of the tribe’s drinking water, officials say.
The pooling water and wetlands will also hopefully reduce the likelihood of drought and wildfire, acting as a “fuel break” if fire comes through the area, according to Wade Crowfoot, the California Natural Resources secretary.
“I’m very happy to see them come home and it’s going to be wonderful to watch them do their thing,” McDarment said. “People will be educated even more by seeing the work that they do and the benefits they bring to the environment.”
At the location of the release, about 6,000 feet above sea level in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, Tule River Tribe spiritual leader JR Manuel performed a blessing, alongside Anthony Hunter of the Tachi Yokut Tribe and Elder Robert Gomez, chairman of the Tubatulabal Tribe, officials said.
Then the beavers slid out of the carriers and into the water to start a new phase of their lives.
“We can make our future different from our past,” the state agency’s director Charlton Bonham said. “Our past is one where we treated these animals and others as varmints, as nuisances, and our culture over time ran them off the landscape. That can’t be our future.”
The reservation comprises 55,356 acres of land in Tulare County, about a 95-mile drive southeast from Fresno.
