California Releases Beavers Into the Wild for First Time in Nearly 75 Years

SACRAMENTO – Today, Governor Gavin Newsom announced that the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) successfully reintroduced a family of beavers to the wild – marking the first time California has conducted such a release in nearly 75 years.

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The historic release represents the first phase of CDFW’s North American beaver restoration project, releasing beavers into the waters on the ancestral lands of the Mountain Maidu people. Soon to follow is a beaver reintroduction effort on the Tule River Reservation in the southern Sierra Nevada.

Working with the Maidu Summit Consortium, CDFW released the family of seven beavers into Plumas County last month, in a location that is known to the tribal community as Tásmam Koyóm. The new family group of beavers join a single resident beaver in the valley with the ultimate objective of re-establishing a breeding population that will maintain the mountain meadow ecosystem, its processes and the habitat it provides for numerous other species.