Utah program relocates beavers to help restore environment

PARADISE, Cache County — Agencies from around the country are looking to Utah for a new program designed to help preserve our outdoor spaces, and it all has to do with the beaver.

Out on a farm in Paradise, one resident noticed water levels around the property were going up. And though they weren’t showing their faces yet, the culprit? Beavers.

“Our grandkids think it’s just the coolest thing in the world that we have beavers,” Billie Murray said. “We first bought this property 11 years ago. We noticed again, just a few weeks ago, the water level is going up.”

Murray called in help from the new Beaver Ecology and Relocation Collaborative, a program dedicated to trapping and relocating beavers instead of killing them.

“The only way to deal with these beavers was to have them lethally trapped and removed, but now we give people an option,” said Nate Norman, lead biologist for the collaborative that started five years ago.

Beaver program gets national attention

Now, they’re getting national attention.

“We’ve been contacted by people in Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, all looking to replicate what we’ve got going on here,” Norman said.

He said that beavers restore environments and help preserve water, which is why Murray wants to relocate her beavers.

“They need to create wetlands, they need to create meadows and renourish the land because they actually create an environment that re-nourishes the land,” Murray said.

Becky Yaeger with the Beaver Ecology and Relocation Collaborative set a trap after breaking down the dam on the Murray property. The team didn’t have to wait long. Just two days later, volunteers brought a 46-pound beaver back to what they call the bunkhouse. That’s where Norman and Yaeger check in the beavers.

Read the full story and more from Erin Cox at KSLTV.com

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