Today, the Oregon Senate voted to pass HB 3932A to tap into nature’s free waterway restoration service and the state animal: the American beaver. Once Gov. Kotek signs the bill into law, it will close beaver hunting and trapping on public lands waterways that the Department of Environmental Quality classifies as impaired. Currently, more than 106,000 miles of these impaired waterways are on public lands.
“HB 3932 gives us an opportunity to try a low tech, low-risk and no-cost strategy to address impaired waterways by encouraging beavers to return to our public lands. The science says this can work, and we want to give it a try,” said Rep. Pam Marsh, who introduced the bill to the legislature as its chief sponsor.
Oregon has the most miles of impaired waterways of any state, suffering from sedimentation, high temperature, low dissolved oxygen, and many other factors. In the past, addressing these issues has relied on costly analysis and remediation and any progress in addressing Oregon’s impaired waterways has proven difficult if not impossible. Decades of scientific evidence has shown beaver dam complexes can help improve water quality by slowing down water flow, filtering and reducing nutrient pollution, recharging aquifers, and improving habitats for other aquatic species like salmon, birds and other wildlife that depend on them. And beavers do this for free, so long as they are alive and given the opportunity to establish their rightful place in these waters.
“With HB 3932, Oregon is leading the charge on changing the narrative on beavers from pesky rodents to remarkable ecosystem engineers that can change Oregon’s degraded landscape and address its water quality problems,” said Sristi Kamal, deputy director of the Western Environmental Law Center. “We humans have spent millions of dollars for decades on restoration and remediation, while beavers do this work so effectively and efficiently. Closing beaver hunting and trapping on impaired waterways on public lands will allow us to retain beavers where they are needed the most so meaningful restoration can take place.”
HB 3932 connects one of the main ecosystem benefits from beavers to its harvest—as long as a stream/waterway on public lands remain impaired, it is closed to beaver hunting/trapping. The bill does not apply to private lands and does not interfere with private landowners’ ability to address potential beaver impacts on their lands.
“Beavers have been tending the waterways of the Beaver State since before humans emerged from the fossil record, and they’re better at it than we are,” said Jakob Shockey, executive director of Project Beaver. “With the passage of HB 3932, we are tipping our hats to the expertise of these fellow ecosystem engineers by formalizing a partnership with beavers to fix our damaged waterways.”
“Beaver managed floodplains are so productive and valuable because they are not simply streams or rivers where beavers happen to live,” said Jefferson Jacobs, riparian restoration coordinator at the Oregon Natural Desert Association. “Instead, they are habitats that beavers steward for generations, creating and maintaining unique conditions such as cool, clean water. That unique habitat depends on that consistent presence and activity of beavers. With beavers now safe, humans can be more incentivized and encouraged to improve the conditions along these streams and rivers to provide beavers with the tools they need for their, and our, survival.”
Contact:
Sristi Kamal, Western Environmental Law Center, 971-808-0775, gro.w1750159860alnre1750159860tsew@1750159860lamak1750159860
Rep. Pam Marsh, chief sponsor of HB 3932, 503-986-1405, vog.e1750159860rutal1750159860sigel1750159860noger1750159860o@hsr1750159860ammap1750159860.per1750159860
Jakob Shockey, Project Beaver, 541-761-3312, gro.r1750159860evaeb1750159860tcejo1750159860rp@bo1750159860kaj1750159860
Jefferson Jacobs, Oregon Natural Desert Association, 541-330-2638 ext 313, gro.a1750159860dno@s1750159860bocaj1750159860j1750159860
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