Beavers are making a comeback in Oregon, with the Mid-Willamette Beaver Partnership (MWBP) leading efforts to promote human-beaver coexistence and habitat restoration. The animal is a keystone species and “ecosystem engineer” and recent management strategies across the region through a coalition of various conservation groups and tribal entities has promoted coexistence efforts.
These efforts brought forth by MWBP are helping to shift public perception and increase beaver-related restoration (BBR) efforts across the Willamette Valley.
“I’ve been on a mission, I guess you could say, for the last six years now, trying to make it easier to restore habitat for beavers and to coexist with beavers,” Jean-Paul Zagarola, a senior program manager at Bonneville Environmental Foundation, who started his work with the Mid-Willamette Beaver Partnership.
Beavers’ activities provide numerous environmental benefits that include:
- Water Management: Beaver dams slow water flow, recharge groundwater, improve water quality, and create natural fire breaks, which is especially important in the context of climate change.
- Habitat Creation: The ponds and wetlands created by beavers increase biodiversity, providing essential habitats for various fish (like salmon), birds, and mammals.
- Stream Health: Their dam-building activities help restore incised streams and create complex, resilient river systems.
“I don’t know that there’s an ecosystem engineer out there that provides as many benefits to both the ecosystem they’re creating or supporting—but also to human communities and human systems,” Zagarola said. “Their role is a ‘keystone species.’”
The MWBP regional network is responsible for:
- Habitat Restoration: Assessing and enhancing stream habitats to support healthy beaver populations.
- Conflict Mitigation: Addressing human-beaver conflicts using non-lethal alternatives to trapping, such as pond levelers and protective fencing, and developing educational resources on these techniques.
- Education and Outreach: Showcasing success stories of coexistence and providing resources to landowners and community members on the benefits of beavers and how to manage them on private land.
- Policy Advancement: Supporting policy changes that protect beavers on public lands and encourage non-lethal management.
“You’re not going to stop the beavers,” Dave Sims, a resident whose home is about 750 feet downstream from the beaver pond, said. “So, the best thing you can do is to help the beavers, right? If you give them a backbone to build their dam on, the dam is just going to be better and stronger. So, I think the beavers are gonna be happy and I’m going to be happy.”
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