The signs of their work are modest but ubiquitous. Branches and debris stacked carefully in layers across several feet of meandering river. Gnawed pieces of willow on the ground. Hidden canals. Footprints. Scat.

Six months after a historic and powerful set of winter storms flushed out the Salinas River watershed, the local beaver population is starting to rebuild what got swept away.

"It's kind of like the infancy of the beaver habitat," says Audrey Taub, founder of the San Luis Obispo Beaver Brigade and frequent visitor to this section of the Salinas in Atascadero. "It's very late in the season for them to be starting. It's going to be fascinating to watch."

Ankle-deep in water, Taub points across the river, up its bank, to show me the scope that the prior beaver dam habitat took on before the rains. At its height, it spanned about 100 feet across the channel. The morning of June 16, the beginnings of a new dam stretch no more than 10 feet.

"The riparian area was completely underwater, all these trees," Taub says, pointing to the now-exposed vegetation on the banks. "They build the dams and slow the water down. They build these little canals, and the canals further spread out the water.

"It lasted until the Jan. 9 storm, and then all the riparian area washed away," she continues, looking around. "It's amazing to see the changes."

Despite the upheaval, beavers are resilient and will rebuild here. And Taub is on a mission to educate the public about why it's critical for that to happen—and why rebuilding beaver populations across the state must be a priority.

"Most everyone has this impression that the Salinas River is completely dry and underground. But really, wherever there's beavers, there's water," Taub said. "It raises the groundwater enough so it's on the surface."

Improved groundwater recharge is just one beneficial element of what beavers do. They also provide fire breaks. Flood control. Carbon sequestration. A natural filtration system for pollutants. And more.

Beavers used to dominate the entire North American landscape, before the fur trade severely depleted their numbers. An estimated 400 million beavers roamed the continent at one time, according to Cooper Lienhart, a river restorationist with the SLO Beaver Brigade.

"It was beaver land out here," Lienhart says, wading through the river next to Taub. "The whole United States used to be 20 percent wetlands. And now, it's less than 2 percent. So, the beavers were just turning these creeks and rivers into wetlands."

Taub founded the SLO Beaver Brigade in 2020 to raise awareness locally about the importance of the continent's largest rodent. It's since taken off.

Today, the nonprofit has multiple staff members, held a Beaver Festival in SLO Mission Plaza this spring, and recently received a Whale Tail Grant from the California Coastal Commission to expand its public tours of Salinas River beaver habitat.

"It's pretty interesting that people get it," Taub says. "Everybody gets the importance of having water. I'm amazed at how very little [convincing] we have to do."

With help from Cal State Channel Islands beaver scientist Dr. Emily Fairfax, Taub says the Brigade has done some surveying of the local beaver population. It's identified three families in Atascadero, one family in Templeton, and two families in Paso Robles—all along the Salinas River.

"Every half mile it seems like," she says. "They're very social. They mate for life and give birth every year."

Beavers are also active in the Arroyo Grande and Pismo creeks. And in an interesting twist following the winter storms, the group recently found beavers settling in previously uninhabited areas, like Old Creek near Cayucos.

"That's an entirely different watershed, which is super exciting," Taub says. "It does seem like they've headed into the tributaries because of the rains."

In the big picture, Taub and Lienhart would like to see the state of California modernize its antiquated laws and regulations affecting beavers.

As a rodent, beavers are technically pests, so they cannot be legally relocated. And as pests, if they caused a nuisance on someone's land, historically, they could be killed.

But that's slowly changing. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife recently announced a new beaver restoration program that Taub calls "a 180-degree turn" for the agency.

"They're the ones where if you wanted a beaver removed, they would come and legally take it. Now, they have to educate landowners on how to live with beavers. They are having to change," Taub explains.

Another goal for the Brigade is to begin installing beaver dam analogs—human made beaver dams—along creeks and rivers to mimic the conditions and benefits of a beaver habitat. Then, longer term, real beavers could move into that habitat and take over the work.

"Beavers are way better than us making these dams, but we don't have a lot of limitations that beavers do," Lienhart says. "Rangeland farmlands that don't have that willow growing on their properties ... we can go in there and build a couple series of these human made beaver dams."

While Taub and Lienhart emanate optimism about the future of beavers, challenges remain. The work in front of them to educate the wider public about the animal is symbolized by a set of ATV tire marks that runs through the riverbed, right past the infant beaver dam.

Walking about 100 feet farther downstream, Taub points to a scattered pile of willow branches on the bank, where another set of tire tracks have run through. It appears that ATV riders recently plowed over a dam. Thankfully, Lienhart reminds me, beavers are resilient.

"Their dams will get busted," he says, "but they'll just keep rebuilding."