Bill Leikam runs the urban wildlife project in San Jose and is well known as the “fox guy”. I met him through the beaver festival and he has gradually become more interested in beavers over time. He hasn’t been at our last couple festivals because the June date conflicts with a back country trip but we have been in contact and he wrote me Thursday night that something showed up on his tail cam and could I take a look at it?
Well I did.
I think you can guess what I thought about it. Surely it moves faster than we are used, but it’s on land and none too relaxed. But that is definitely a beaver.
Bill was so excited.
Juvenile beaver makes first appearance in over 160 years in Palo Alto Baylands
A young beaver was spotted in the Palo Alto Baylands this week, marking perhaps the beginning of the return of the aquatic herbivores after more than 160 years. Researchers, who have long sought its comeback, are thrilled.
The chubby critter scampered across a remote, open area near Matadero Creek and was photographed on the trail camera of baylands fox researcher Bill Leikam on Aug. 23. Leikam, aka The Fox Guy, is president and co-founder of the Urban Wildlife Research Project, a Palo Alto-based nonprofit organization dedicated to the study and habitat expansion of the baylands gray fox.
Having been hunted and trapped to extinction in the Bay Area, the beaver is an even rarer sight in the baylands than the little gray foxes.
I’m told that Matadero creek is the only one in Palo Alto that has not been concreted. So the beaver moved into the right place. That beaver looks too little to me to be a disperser. He has a mom and dad somewhere. So there are likely at least three beavers in Palo Alto.
In September 2022, a pair of beavers was photographed on the trail cameras; Leikam and other researchers are hopeful that they have since mated and produced offspring. While there’s no evidence at this point that the young beaver is the offspring of the adult pair spotted a year ago, its very presence is a good sign. Hopefully, they are comfortable colonizing in Palo Alto and possibly other creeks in northern Santa Clara and southern San Mateo counties.
“When I first saw it I suspected that it might be a young juvenile beaver, and since I’d never seen one before, I needed an expert like Dr. Heidi Perryman to confirm it. I am very excited about this turn of events,” Leikam said, referring to the founder of Worth a Dam, an advocacy group studying and protecting the beaver populations in Martinez, California.
Shout out to Martinez!
Leikam’s first record of the pair of semi-aquatic rodents gliding through the creek’s waters last year was an exciting development. Beavers were once thought to never have existed here at all, according to scientists.
In 2013, Dr. Rick Lanman, a historical ecologist and president of the Los Altos-based Institute for Historical Ecology, made a stunning find – a preserved beaver skull at the Smithsonian Institution, which was collected on Saratoga Creek around 1855.
Lanman said that beavers got a new chance at returning to Santa Clara County waterways in the 1980s after being reintroduced to Los Gatos Creek near Lexington Reservoir. They began making their way northward, including San Jose.
Beavers have been photographed at Moffett Gate; their tracks, including a tail drag in the mudflats, were photographed in Charleston Slough, just east of the Adobe Creek levee, he said at the time of the 2022 discovery in Matadero Creek. They use the salt water in San Francisco Bay to move from one freshwater tributary to another.
A colony of little beavers with the potential to inhabit San Francisquito Creek and move into the adjacent San Mateo County could be a game changer, Lanman said in 2022. At a certain point, in a favorable habitat and with an open corridor, the population could jump.
Beavers are beneficial to the environment, Stanford University researchers found. They may lessen damage from drought by creating a habitat that pushes water into secondary channels. Plants in these environments help filter out contaminants and purify water, improving wildlife habitats. Consequent dams could help create protective refuges for endangered fish species.
Shoutout to beavers! Hurray! Well little stanford beaver you have your work cut out for you but we wish you ALL the best and uncles Bill Leikam and Rick Lanman will do their best to keep things hospitable.
My 95 year old uncle called last night to say the story was on channel 7 news and did I know about it so it’s definitely getting talked about.
Congratulations Bill! Surely this is a different welcome than Martinez gave its beavers all those years ago.
