Beavers will now roam wetlands on the south side of Mount St. Helens for the first time in decades thanks to the Cowlitz Indian Tribe’s efforts to relocate the semi-aquatic mammal across Southwest Washington.
The Tribe recently launched its “Kit Cam,” an online livestream that followed the growth of four beaver kits born on April 16 and their mother as they prepared for relocation into the wild.
Along the gradual slopes of Mount St. Helens, the family of North American beavers were reintroduced into an ecosystem created by the mammal species decades ago on Thursday, May 28.
The project is part of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe’s ongoing beaver relocation program, which is one of the largest in the western United States. The program moves approximately 70 beavers each year from areas of human-wildlife conflict into more suitable habitat.
Cowlitz Indian Tribe Wildlife Program Manager Jesse Burgher said the work is focused on restoring ecosystems and improving water systems across the region.
“It’s really an interesting way to work with wildlife to help restore ecosystem balance and recover biodiversity and look towards climate resiliency in the future,” Burgher said. “So it really speaks to that kind of working with the animals to sustain and maintain those landscapes that are really important for the fish and wildlife species.”
To determine where the famed “Kit Cam” family will reside, Burgher and Cowlitz Indian Tribe Wildlife Technician Dan Kolenberg reviewed a series of aerial imagery dating back to 1994 of the area near the southern flank of the volcano.
“There’s this sort of terraced aspect to the landscape here and that’s actually caused by a series of beaver dams that were built sometime in the past,” Burgher said, adding that the visible dams were in the aerial photographs from 1994 to present day. “These dams have been there this whole time, but we don’t see any evidence of actual beaver occupancy in those decades. We don’t see new dams being constructed. So by bringing beavers back here, we’re hoping to continue the maintenance of these dams and hopefully raise water levels and store more water here.”
The water system the beaver family was released in feeds into Pine Creek, a tributary of the Lewis River that is one of the last breeding areas for bull trout in the Lewis River system.
“So really maintaining the quality of water and quantity of water in the system is really important for those species,” Burgher said. “So that’s one reason why we’re targeting this area.”
Kolenberg said the Tribe’s beaver work complements its salmon habitat restoration projects throughout the Columbia River watershed.
“The tribe has done a lot of great work with restoring salmon habitat on tributaries of the Columbia River like the Kwoneesum Dam project and stuff up on Ostrander Creek,” Kolenberg said. “And you know, there’s recovery of salmon habitat in the lowlands but also up here in the mountains. We can’t do as much of that bigger work, but beavers play a really important role in that.”
Burgher said beavers benefit a wide range of species beyond fish, including amphibians, birds and other wildlife that depend on wetlands and riparian habitat.
“There’s a lot of studies showing benefits for waterfowl, for songbirds, you know, anything that uses the riparian area,” Burgher said. “Beavers will enhance those riparian zones. And so a lot of species will tend to benefit from beaver establishment.”
Burgher added that beavers are especially useful in smaller tributaries where larger restoration projects are less practical.
“You can do the large-scale salmon restoration on some of those bigger systems down along the Columbia where the beavers maybe can’t dam it,” Burgher said, “but then when you go higher in those systems in the smaller tributaries, beavers are a really great way to restore habitat and help with water quality and quantity.”
While the recently released beaver family spent its early weeks at the Tribe’s facility before moving into the wild. Burgher said he expects the animals to quickly adapt to their new surroundings, but also find challenges in a new world for them.
“I imagine they’re going to explore and find somewhere where they can be safe,” Burgher said. “The little ones, you know, all they’ve ever known is our facility, and so it’s going to be an interesting hurdle to kind of understand the wild.”
Kolenberg pointed out the kits quickly showed natural instincts for building and modifying habitat.
“Even the little ones, you guys watched, you know, little ones are moving sticks twice their size and stuff like that,” Kolenberg said. “So I’m sure they’re going to be busy too with setting up their new home.”
Burgher added that the animals’ semi-aquatic nature helps them move materials and build habitat efficiently.
“That’s even easier for them in the water because they can float that wood,” Burgher said. “So that’s really one of the reasons that they are semi-aquatic. That’s one of their safety, but also helps them move sticks around and improve their habitat.”
In the area of Mount St. Helens, the beaver family may face predation from cougars and black bears, but the program continues to see strong results after seasonal surveys.
“We’re having a really high success rate thus far,” Burgher said. “We were at about a 90-percent success rate. So, much, much higher than what the scientific literature suggests.”
Monitoring relocated beavers requires extensive field surveys to document tracks, feeding activity and habitat changes. The collected data helps tribal staff better understand how beavers move through landscapes and establish territories over time.
“We hope to collect this data over the years to really spell out how beavers are moving around the landscape and how they are setting up their territories,” Kolenberg said.
Many of the relocated beavers come from areas where they create conflicts by flooding roads or damaging property. Burgher said the Tribe’s efforts help expand non-lethal management options.
“We’ve been working to build these partnerships to kind of transition more folks into this non-lethal management so we can work to restore the populations here,” he said.
Surrounding the relocation site were environment changes that were created by beavers in decades prior. Dead trees surrounding standing water, tree snags and expanded aquatic plant life around the shallow standing water were all signs of the work of busy beavers at one point in time.
Kolenberg said the beavers increase habitat complexity, benefiting biodiversity across the board.
“Beavers put the complex in complex habitat,” he said.
