Last month, Pitkin County Healthy Rivers submitted a letter to Colorado Parks and Wildlife with feedback on the agency’s recently released Beaver Conservation and Management Strategy.
As previously reported by The Aspen Times, the aim of the Beaver Strategy is to increase and sustain both beaver populations and beaver-influenced wetlands in suitable habitats across the state in order to better support this keystone species, also known as “ecological engineers.”
“Beavers are altering the landscape by slowing down water and expanding the perimeter of the water body,” said Jim Kravitz, vice president of programs for Aspen Center for Environmental Studies. “They are creating more of an edge to a pond or a river system, and they’re increasing this riparian area. In an arid state like Colorado, less than 5% of the land is riparian, and 80% of wildlife rely on riparian areas for a significant life event.”
Those life events include feeding, nesting, migration, and more.
The public comment period for CPW’s draft ended Dec. 17. In a letter dated Dec. 17 and addressed to CPW staff — from Wetlands Program Coordinator Brian Sullivan, Native Aquatic Species Coordinator Boyd Wright, Carnivore and Furbearer Program Manager Mark Vieira, and Policy and Engagement Specialist Jonathan Boyd — Pitkin County Healthy Rivers Citizen Advisory Board shared their insight and recommendations to the Beaver Strategy, commending much of the plan.
“The Pitkin County Healthy Rivers Citizens Advisory Board would like to commend Colorado Parks and Wildlife for creating an impressive proactive plan, the ‘Beaver Strategy,’ which is reputed to be vying for best in the country by not only supporting beavers, but specifically calling to ‘increase and sustain their prevalence,’” the letter reads. “We stand ready to partner with the CPW in creation of a coordinated framework for all of Colorado to bring the plan to fruition.”
Lisa Tasker, of the Pitkin County Healthy Rivers Program, told The Aspen Times that, while she can’t speak for the entire board, CPW’s proactive efforts to help beavers succeed was particularly impressive due to its ecological focus rooted in science and its strong statement of ecological goals and strategies.
“If you care about increasing our resilience to drought, flooding, and wildfires, if you want improved water quality, restoration of riparian and wetland habitats, and to enjoy our birds and diverse wildlife species that depend on healthy streams, those are solid reasons to care about beavers,” Tasker said.
Among the letter’s suggested changes was a recommendation to follow other states — including Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and Utah — to pass regulations giving authority to CPW to require landowners to report numbers and locations where beavers are lethally taken via the permitting process.
“Minus this data, accurate population numbers will never be achieved,” the letter states.
It also suggested requiring mandatory harvest reporting in place of voluntary reporting and to end support of avocational harvest, meaning recreational killing, of beavers on public lands.
“It’s just plain difficult to understand how this ‘avocational harvest’ of beavers fits into an ecologically focused management plan, one expecting to support more beavers,” Tasker said.
Additional changes suggested in the letter included incentivizing “collaboration with partners to strategize and implement restoration in these identified locations,” using “the best available science and data to identify beaver restoration opportunity watersheds,” and increasing nonlethal conflict capacity through workshops, training, demonstration projects, and landowner support.
When commenting on translocation policy and protocol, one of the chapters in the drafted strategy and a nonlethal removal option, the Pitkin County Healthy Rivers Citizen Advisory Board highlighted the need to work with partners in order to identify locations able to support beavers that have been relocated, to create a standardized or permitting process to “optimize translocation,” to build a statewide network of holding facilities, to create a funding plan, and to use “the best available science to guide trapping protocols,” meaning capturing the whole family, quarantines, and more.
According to Tasker, some live trapping and relocation attempts have happened in the Roaring Fork Watershed, although she noted that translocation is a second-to-last resort, with lethal removal being the last.
Kravitz echoed this sentiment, underscoring the importance of relocating beavers only when all other options have failed.
“I absolutely think it’s a last resort,” he said.
According to Kravitz, alternative tools like beaver deceivers, which make beavers think the water is already damned, and wrapping the base of trees to prevent beaver activity can help make beavers relocate on their own or help protect property despite beaver presence.
“There are different tools you can use to coexist with beavers,” he said. “We’ve been doing that here at Hallam Lake for 50 years.”
Pitkin County Healthy Rivers’ letter also promotes coexistence as a “top priority,” which Tasker said hinges on education.
“The benefits (of beavers) are probably the most unclear, while the challenges are obvious,” she said. “Coexistence is allowing beavers who arrive, (to) remain. Cost can be the best reason to do this. If you have a site they are attracted to, if you remove them, expect more to arrive. The real estate remains attractive. This could be a devastating yearly activity, while coexistence is finding a way to let them stay and discovering the benefits and even the joy of that.”
Pitkin County Healthy Rivers is creating a new landowner grant program to help fund beaver deceiver infrastructure and tree fencing in 2026, for landowners who are interested in the possibility of coexistence.
