Owens River - Ecology

Ecology

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) has recently decided to trap beaver (Castor canadensis) out of the Owens Valley, claiming that beaver are damming flows into their diversions of water to Los Angeles. This decision runs counter to an independent assessment commissioned by LADWP and the Inyo County Water Department in 1997, where it was recommended that beaver be maintained in reasonable populations and their dams left in place because "Although beaver activity has resulted in the removal of much willow and other shrub and woody vegetation and the dams create favorable tule conditions and reduce fish spawning habitat, they also provide important fish rearing habitat, mesic meadows, and promote the growth of other riparian species. It is most likely that the physical removal of beaver dams will result in more adverse environmental impacts than environmental benefits."

Beaver were re-introduced to the Owens Valley by the California Department of Fish and Game in 1948 in Baker Creek, and have since spread throughout the Owens Valley. Although it is controversial whether beaver were once native to the Owens Valley, there is growing evidence that they were native to the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada. In particular, the northern Paiute of Walker Lake, Honey Lake and Pyramid Lake have a word for beaver su-i'-tu-ti-kut'-teh. When Stephen Powers visited the northern Paiute to collect Indian materials for the Smithsonian Institution in preparation for the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, he reported that the northern Paiute wrapped their hair in strips of beaver fur, made medicine from parts of beaver and that their creation legend included beaver. In addition, fur trapper Stephen Hall Meek "set his traps on the Truckee River in 1833", which strongly suggests that he saw beaver or beaver sign. Supporting this line of evidence, Tappe records in 1941 an eyewitness who said beaver were plentiful on the upper part of the Carson River and its tributaries in Alpine County until 1892 when they fell victim to heavy trapping.