Time for some Oregon-Coho good beaver news, don’t you think?

Native beavers join Oregon wild coho recovery work

This summer marked a flurry of coho salmon habitat restoration work in the headwaters of the Upper Nehalem, with beavers at the heart of the work. Over the past several weeks, twenty-seven beaver dam analogs were constructed in four high priority reaches for coho, steelhead and cutthroat trout. Beaver have already found their way to the newly built analogs, which are like footholds for the beaver to build out into full-fledged dams using their advanced engineering skills.

Beavers and coho restoration go hand and hand. According to Mark Trenholm with the Wild Salmon Center, “Bringing beaver back to selected locations in the upper Nehalem will help restore some key tributaries to better reflect historic conditions that once made the Nehalem a coho stronghold.” By damming up small tributaries, beavers provide shallow, cold water pools where coho can find food and cover from predators. These types of off-channel habitats are essential for juvenile coho to survive and grow during the year they spend in freshwater before migrating downstream to the ocean.

Well that seems pretty clear, Although you might have to say a little more about how beavers provide “shallow cool pools” for salmon rearing. Of course I know the answer, but not everyone will.

 Why Coho Are Important: The health of Oregon’s coast coho populations is a vital indicator of the health of our coastal watersheds. These fish are threatened after 150 years of land use on the coast that has altered watersheds and degraded critical coho habitats. Loss of watershed health has impacted local communities through increased flooding, impaired water quality, and less economic activity from commercial and recreational fishing. But restoring coastal river systems is within reach on Oregon’s North Coast, and it is a key step for coho recovery.

See that made the case powerfully. I guess you are more used to explaining why salmon matter than why beavers matter, which is almost always the case. It’s a far easier sell, honestly. But laying out why beavers matter to salmon is an essential building block that we all need to get better at.

I know California will get there eventually. I just hope our understanding about beavers arrives soon enough to make a real difference.