Our stewardship coordinator Bengt Miller notes how we work alongside beavers in our restoration efforts, but sometimes they aren’t great coworkers, saying:

Skagit Fisheries has a complicated relationship with beavers. These large rodents have lived alongside
salmon for thousands of years. Beavers provide many benefits to salmon. They build dams that back up
water into ponds that provide wonderful habitat for juvenile salmon, and these same ponds can help
mitigate floods by absorbing lots of water and slowly releasing this water over time. During the dry
summer months these ponds are wonderful refugia for juvenile salmon. Scientific evidence also points
to the fact that these ponds help regulate water temperature. This will become increasingly important
as our climate continues to warm and the summer months become drier.
While beavers to provide much upside, sometimes working in their vicinity can be disheartening. Each
year Skagit Fisheries plants tens of thousands of trees in riparian areas to provide habitat for salmon.
These riparian areas are also the native range of beavers. Every year SFEG loses some number of trees
to beaver predation. It’s sad to see a thriving tree gnawed to the ground, but one can’t take it personally
because the beavers are only doing what comes instinctually. On the whole, it’s better for the salmon
the have beavers in the watershed than not.

 

Pictured is Muriel Troka, our restoration tech lead, with a tree that has seen better days…