The beaver population on the San Pedro River increased by one Friday with the release of a transplant that was trapped by a pest control company along Oak Creek southwest of Sedona.
Rather than kill the “nuisance animal,” Steven Martin from Critter Control of Northern Arizona worked with the Tucson-based Watershed Management Group to find the beaver a welcoming new home at an educational nature center on the San Pedro near Sierra Vista.
“We were all really excited. It made our week,” Martin...
Under cover of darkness, beavers are swimming through tranquil pools in the San Pedro River. They're gnawing on tree trunks. They're building dams.
We know this because of the work of volunteers who have recently walked miles along the river searching for signs of beavers.
Next to the piled branches of one beaver dam, a volunteer strapped a wildlife camera to a tree several months ago. And in the middle of the night, two beavers repeatedly turned up in the infrared images, their eyes glowing in...
At their peak in 2010, there were 39 dams and 100 to 160 beavers along the 40-mile stretch of the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area (SPRNCA)—wow! When WMG heard about their declining population in early 2019, we had to learn more. Local beaver enthusiasts Mike Foster and Steve Merkley took WMG’s River Run Network members along the SPRNCA to seek signs of beavers and estimate their current population this past December. This survey started a journey of confirming beavers are still in...
If you picked the Beavers in your bracket, you can probably forget about winning your office basketball pool.
But if you’re betting on the beavers along the San Pedro River, you’re still in luck.
A Tucson-based environmental group says the dam-building rodents are doing better than previously thought on the federally protected river southeast of Tucson, where they were reintroduced 20 years ago after being wiped out in the early 20th century.
At least 15 beavers are now thought to be living...
Thousands of beavers once populated Southern Arizona’s rivers, with frontiersman James Ohio Pattie dubbing the San Pedro River as “Beaver River.” But the animals were hunted and trapped to extermination in the 1800s and early 1900s. However, in 1999 the Bureau of Land Management released 16 beavers into the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area. Since then, the population has ebbed and flowed, with 50 beavers now estimated along the San Pedro. This summer, BLM plans to introduce a new...
We’re honoring beavers and the amazing work they’re doing for our desert creeks and rivers as well as rivers all over the world!
Wiped out by trappers in the 1800s, beavers are repopulating the Santa Cruz and San Pedro Rivers in Southern Arizona, and they need our help. Donate today to our Release the Beavers campaign; your gift will help ensure beaver’s success through community education and advocacy, river restoration, and monitoring efforts. Our goal is to raise $75,000,...
Before they were wiped out by hunters and trappers in the early 1800s, beavers were a fairly common site in Southern Arizona.
The nonprofit Watershed Management Group hopes to make their regular presence a reality again by reintroducing beavers to local waterways, with a little help from the Tucson community.
On Friday, Sept. 27, the group will host Beavers, Brews and Santa Cruz, an event meant to raise funds to bring more beavers back to the region.
The event will feature a screening of the...
by WMG River Restoration Biologst Trevor Hare
In response to Sunday’s article “Dam shame: Beavers face 2nd extinction on San Pedro River,” I am disappointed to learn that neither the Bureau of Land Management nor the Arizona Game and Fish Department knows what is going on with the American beaver in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area.
The reintroduction of the American beaver by BLM and AGFD 20 years ago along the San Pedro River was thought to be largely successful...
