The Cowlitz Indian Tribe is giving you an up-close look at its beaver relocation program.
The Cowlitz ‘Kit Cam’ is a livestream featuring a young beaver family preparing to be released into the wild.
You can view the livestream by clicking here. It will be available until the kits are released into the wild.
The four baby beavers – known as kits – were born on April 16 and are currently learning survival behaviors from their mother.
This relocation program is the largest of its kind in Washington. Each year, they relocate roughly 70 beavers, representing 20 to 30 family groups.
Beavers can help restore wetlands, improve water quality, and create habitats for fish and wildlife.
“As Cowlitz people, we have always understood our responsibility to care for the land and the resources it provides,” said Cowlitz Indian Tribe Chairman Bill Iyall. “This program is one way we are putting that responsibility into action—restoring balance to our ancestral homelands and waterways, and planning for the generations that come after us.”
In the 1800s, beaver populations were significantly reduced by commercial fur trapping and early colonization. To this day, the population is not what it used to be.
“Beavers are amazing ecosystem engineers and create high-quality, complex wetland habitats that support biodiversity and ecosystem properties that can help buffer the projected impacts of climate change,” said Jesse Burgher, Wildlife Program Manager. “We’re finding a lot of evidence that suggests beavers once occupied many areas of the Cascade mountains of Southwest Washington and are taking efforts to rebuild beaver populations to restore critical freshwater resources and ecosystems across the landscape.”
Beavers that enter the program are brought by wildlife professionals to the Tribe’s beaver husbandry facility on the Cowlitz reservation while their other family members are safely captured. The beavers are then held for 7 to 10 days before they are relocated. Once a family group is complete, they are released into pre-identified suitable habitats, followed by post-release monitoring to track relocation success and habitat outcomes.
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