In the fall of 2023, California released 7 beavers into the ancestral lands of the Mountain Maidu people after nearly 75 years. Now they’re building dams, canals and have expanded wetlands by 23%

Before the European settlers popularized the fur trade, beavers were the inhabitants; some 60 million and 400 million roamed around the wetlands of North America. Since then, they were largely seen as a nuisance in most households, blamed for flooding and damage to trees and waterways. But the state of California has recently started looking at the furry wetland residents differently.

In 2023, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) carried out its first beaver conservation translocation in nearly 75 years. They released a family of seven beavers into Tásmam Koyóm, a 2,325-acre valley in Plumas County. The project was carried out with the Maidu Summit Consortium.

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The idea came from an ancient beaver drawing

On the Tule River Indian Reservation, tribal member Kenneth McDarment had often passed an ochre-red pictograph depicting a beaver. The artwork, created by the Yokuts people, is estimated to be between 500 and 1,000 years old. It took a severe drought for McDarment and other tribal leaders to look at the image differently.

“Sometimes you need to just look at things more often,” McDarment told Mongabay in 2025. The tribe began considering whether the animal that had once preserved the landscape could also help address the water challenges of today. Eventually, they became part of a partnership involving the Tule River Tribe, the Maidu Summit Consortium and CDFW.

Seven beavers were the beginning

On October 18, 2023, seven beavers were released at Tásmam Koyóm. By September 2024, 28 beavers had been relocated across five release sites, according to Upworthy.

For Chuck Bonham, CDFW's Director, watching the animals settle in was quite a sight. “When you bring them home, you'll restore your ecology, you get your healthy functioning again in your Meadows, in your Alpine streams in your coastal estuaries,” he said during that time.

Why California wants beavers back

Beavers are known as “ecosystem engineers” because their dams can slow water, create ponds and wetlands, reconnect streams with floodplains and provide habitat for other species.

CDFW says beaver activity can support “ecosystem conservation, habitat restoration, species conservation, and improve climate change, drought, and wildfire resilience throughout California.”

Beavers are now having babies, building dams and shaping streams

According to the CDFW’s April 2025 report, the translocated beavers have already produced two litters of kits and built dams at three of the release sites.

At the most productive site, the animals have also started digging a network of canals and “reconnected the stream with its floodplain,” CDFW said. Their activity has also “increased the surface water area by approximately 23%.”

Emily Fairfax, an ecohydrologist at the University of Minnesota, described beavers as “really powerful ecosystem engineers.”

“The number of services they provide to us and ways that they build resilient landscapes is honestly too much to just rattle off all at once,” Fairfax told Mongabay.

The comeback has also carried cultural significance for the Mountain Maidu and Tule River tribes. Shannon Salem Williams, a Mountain Maidu program manager, described watching the beavers enter the water as a “full circle moment.” “It was like a big welcoming home,” she said to the outlet.