Years ago, before the world was woke to beavers, when Martinez was acting like a tyrant about hosting a handful of the villains in Alhambra Creek, I used to look wistfully north and see Washington state and all its good works and view it as a kind of  Nirvana where beavers were treated like water deities. And I would be SO JEALOUS. And think, SOMEDAY. That could happen here. Maybe SOMEDAY.

And with all that wishing and dreaming I never stopped to think that the reverse was also true. By which I mean that the entire genuine Martinez-stupidity disease could spread North.

Washington landowners say county-owned beaver dams left wells brown as parts of creek ran dry

A dispute is unfolding along Clover Creek in Pierce County, Washington. Residents say county-owned parcels thick with vegetation and beaver dams are flooding private property, turning well water brown, and drying up parts of the creek.

Property owner Bob Trapp told KIRO 7 that his Tacoma property along Clover Creek once included grassy acreage where his dogs could roam. The land now floods for part of the year, Trapp said, then dries into cracked ground in the summer.

“This whole thing is covered with water,” he said.

Trapp said the flooding has also turned the water in his shallow well brown.

“We have to boil our water, because we don’t know; it stinks like

swamp,” he said.

Well now. That doesn’t sound like Washington does it? That sounds like Contra Costa stupid. Maybe worse. I am just fascinated to see how the smarty pants state handles this ignorance. Wait, get me some popcorn,

“This whole thing is covered with water,” he said.

Trapp said the flooding has also turned the water in his shallow well brown

Smith said the county is continuing to monitor the area and actively managing it to support public benefit, protect natural resources, and address local flooding concerns.

Residents and restoration advocates, meanwhile, say degraded parts of the creek need more direct cleanup, especially where they believe invasive growth and obstructions are worsening conditions.

As Grams put it, “It’s an uphill battle.”

including on county-owned property between 20th Avenue East and 25th Avenue East.On the far side of those same county parcels, resident Randy Grams said he is dealing with a different result: too little water in the creek bed near his home.

“A lot of the trees are drying out and dying,” he said.

Once a year we have the local chimney sweep in to clean the stove pipe. And every year he complains about flooding in Martinez. He says he lives two miles away on the creek and his yard floods every year almost to his door.

Because of the beavers. He explains.

Sometimes I try explaining that we haven’t had beavers living in the creek for a decade. Ot doesn’t make a whit of difference. He says the same thing the next year. Sometimes I just let him do his shuffing and hozing. Because what I say really doesn’t matter. His mind is  made up.

Maybe he has a brother in Washington.

On the far side of those same county parcels, resident Randy Grams said he is dealing with a different result: too little water in the creek bed near his home.

“A lot of the trees are drying out and dying,” he said.

Grams, a member of the Clover Creek Restoration Alliance, said volunteers have been trying to get into areas they consider blocked, overgrown or otherwise degraded so they can help clean them up.

“It’s an uphill battle,” he said. “We’ve tried to get access to some of the properties to go in and clean them up where the creek is degraded and overgrown and has invasive species growing, and they don’t want

County officials say residents are oversimplifying the situation.

Amanda Smith, a public information specialist with Pierce County’s Planning & Public Works Department, said the county has confirmed beaver dams on its land but believes there may also be additional dams on private property both upstream and downstream.

“This reach of Clover Creek is very flat, and both high surface water and high groundwater levels are common,” she wrote in an email. “The area is designated as a regulated floodplain and a wetland. Elevated water levels can result from multiple factors and are not solely attributable to beaver activity.”

“These county-owned properties are allowed to function in a natural state to provide water quality and ecological benefits to the stream,” Smith wrote, adding that shrubs and tall grass help keep water clean and that downed trees can help reduce downstream flooding.

See what I mean about Washington? So well-meaning. Flood plains and ecological benefits. They might as well be speaking Armenian. These words are not the words that comfort anxious residents.

County officials say residents are oversimplifying the situation.

Amanda Smith, a public information specialist with Pierce County’s Planning & Public Works Department, said the county has confirmed beaver dams on its land but believes there may also be additional dams on private property both upstream and downstream.

“This reach of Clover Creek is very flat, and both high surface water and high groundwater levels are common,” she wrote in an email. “The area is designated as a regulated floodplain and a wetland. Elevated water levels can result from multiple factors and are not solely attributable to beaver activity.”

“These county-owned properties are allowed to function in a natural state to provide water quality and ecological benefits to the stream,” Smith wrote, adding that shrubs and tall grass help keep water clean and that downed trees can help reduce downstream flooding.

Smith said the county is continuing to monitor the area and actively managing it to support public benefit, protect natural resources, and address local flooding concerns.

Residents and restoration advocates, meanwhile, say degraded parts of the creek need more direct cleanup, especially where they believe invasive growth and obstructions are worsening conditions.

As Grams put it, “It’s an uphill battle.”

I’m thinking you need a couple neighborhood barbecues where the city buys the beer and the steaks and there are plenty of smart folks on hand to talk sense about beavers. Have a chat with our friends at Cows and Fish, maybe. Sometimes it takes a real neighborly approach to welcome new neighbors.

Invite my chimney sweep, will you?

This gave me a happy:

BeaverFest celebrates the little critters’ big work in Southern Arizona river restoration

Scientists and community volunteers are tracking signs of recovery among San Pedro River beavers while using the animals’ engineering skills as a model for restoring desert waterways.

We need some mud!”

“More sticks!”

Small hands scramble to fortify a miniature dam — of rocks, dirt and branches — before a blast from a water hose puts their craftsmanship to the test.

“Let’s see if there are any leaks. Here comes the water!” a volunteer announces, pointing the hose toward the child-built structure and turning on the stream. The kids watch as waves pool behind their dam. “It’s holding!” a young boy yells victoriously.

The experiment was one of the hands-on lessons at the Watershed Management Group’s eighth annual BeaverFest, where Tucsonans gather to celebrate beavers.

All around the festival, photos of the slick, toothy, regal-tailed creatures were on display, but one furry face appeared again and again.

Spotting a beaver during the annual surveys is rare. So when volunteers encountered one in the wild during last year’s survey, she quickly became a mascot. Gushing with excitement, one volunteer at the fest showed Arizona Luminaria photos of that beaver and shared that the survey leader had even given her a name: Petunia.

I always liked that idea of having kids make a dam, but was far too wary of Martinez etiquette to try it out. You know they would hate the muddy mess.

People also learned how beavers, a keystone species — animals that have a disproportionately large effect on its surrounding ecosystem — can help restore Southern Arizona’s desert waterways.

The late September event brought together families, scientists and conservationists for an evening of beaver-themed activities and updates on efforts to restore beaver populations across the region. The Tucson-based watershed nonprofit hosted the festival at Living Lab, the organization’s headquarters where they display various sustainability measures they promot

The children’s mini-dam challenge demonstrated the same process that makes beavers important to desert ecosystems. Their barriers slow water and keep it on the landscape, creating wetlands and habitat that support other wildlife.

“They’re nature’s water harvesters,” says Dan Stormont, a local conservation leader and docent with the watershed management group. “We talk about water harvesting all the time, and it’s kind of nice to aspire to be a beaver, because we can only hope to do as much as what beavers do.”

The water conservation group is trying to replicate some of that work. The organization builds beaver dam analogs, human-made structures constructed largely from natural materials found on site. The structures are designed to slow water and trap sediment in degraded waterways. At one restoration site along the Babocomari River, a San Pedro river tributary in Southeastern Arizona, beavers have even added material to the human-built structures.

“So we are basically being the beavers,” says Nadira Mitchell,  a restoration ecology coordinator with the watershed group, during a presentation at BeaverFest 2026.

Beavers historically lived along the San Pedro River but were wiped out by fur trapping in the 1800s, Mitchell says. The river flows from México through Southeastern Arizona before joining the Gila River in Pinal County, supporting riparian ecosystems along the way.

Beavers should be welcomed with parades in Arizona.

The Arizona Game and Fish Department and the Bureau of Land Management reintroduced about 20 beavers in the late 1990s  and early 2000s. By 2010, community members estimated the population had grown to about 100 before it began declining. 

Steve Merkley, an instructor at Cochise College, presented his research on beavers in the San Pedro watershed during the event.

“The beavers are really instrumental in keeping that flowing water in the ecosystem and supporting wildlife in our area,” he says. 

Merkley says a strong monsoon season can benefit beavers by deepening the water in their habitat, providing greater protection from predators and potentially helping them reproduce and expand their population along the river. 

Merkley also shared footage of baby beavers recently documented along the San Pedro River.

“That was the first time I had ever seen evidence of reproduction since I’ve been studying them the last six or seven years,” he says. “And then to see them again, another one on my cameras again this year, was super exciting.” 

For the past five years, the Watershed Management Group and its partners have organized volunteers to track the animals along the San Pedro River in Arizona and Sonora, México.

The community volunteers look for dams, lodges, tracks, chewed trees, muddy slide-like ramps into the pond and even beaver poop to identify clusters of activity and estimate the population. 

About 430 volunteers have participated in the surveys over the past five years, Mitchell says during a BeaverFest presentation of the 2025 survey results. Last fall alone, volunteers surveyed 63.5 miles of the San Pedro across 23 sections in Arizona and México.

The results offered a little progress after years of declines.

The estimated population increased slightly between 2024 and 2025, Mitchell says, although some of that increase was linked to Arizona Game and Fish relocating a male and female beaver to the lower San Pedro.

“We were actually able to see that they were still persisting when we surveyed them last winter,” Mitchell says.

The population remains vulnerable. Groundwater pumping, development, cattle grazing, drought, intense flooding and predators such as mountain lions, all make it more difficult for beavers to persist along the river, Mitchell says.

But BeaverFest 2026 wasn’t all population estimates and river restoration.

Uh oh…

At one booth, children could touch a surprisingly oily beaver pelt and learn what the animals eat by examining pictures of their poop. One young visitor kept bursting into laughter whenever the subject came up.

“They love the beaver poop,” says Esther Wroth, a community conservation apprentice with the watershed group. “They all think that beavers eat fish until you show them the poop and they’re like, ‘Wait — sawdust!’”

For the organization’s staff and volunteers, that silliness is part of the point — making complicated conversations about climate, water and ecological restoration tangible and accessible.

Wroth says environmental solutions do not always have to be new or complicated. Indigenous communities have practiced water harvesting and lived with the rhythms of desert ecosystems for generations, she says. Beavers, too, have been shaping waterways long before humans began constructing structures intended to mimic them.

“Even though climate change is a new problem,” she says, “the solutions aren’t necessarily new.”

Beaver Festivals are good ideas that should reproduce all by themselves.