I offer Noninvasive Camera Monitoring Resources For Education & Coexistence Success to help you know the beavers (and if possible, the fish!) in your watershed by behind the scenes observation monitoring, and seasonal tracking.
I observe the subtle seasonal changes of beavers to better understand them so we can anticipate how best to adapt, and live with them in all our watersheds - city or country.
It's not what you look at, it is what you see.
Onsite or remote beaver resource and guide-wherever your watershed.
I have resources and will guide you on trail camera monitoring. Beavers are nocturnal! (Rent, or buy a City Beavers Trail Camera Kit with remote training and support.)
Let's learn together: What are you noticing? What questions arise living by YOUR local beavers?
A member of the BeaverCorps since 2020.
All photos and footage by Pamela Adams, except where noted by Tom Reese.
Beavers make riparian systems alive with other species. They dig canals, make bank burrows that help fish find safe places to spawn, and eggs to grow into baby fish, that grow up to swim out to sea as a natural cycle. Their dams are natural biofilters for sediments and toxins. Their benefits for our modern life engineering is a growing science. Beaver ecology has been going on for thousands of years (millions really). We're just catching up after the beaver genocide over 200 years ago.
Pamela Adams is a freelance beaver detective. In her past life she majored in Fine Art at San Francisco State University turned former California Certified Risk Manager/Insurance Broker until beavers saved her. A fateful bout of cancer, and a move to the wilds of the PNW she healed by getting back to her roots of hands-on caring for natural places as she had when leading crews in the San Francisco Golden Gate National Recreation Area with the Youth Conservation Corps in 1979. During the Covid-pandemic, in the high desert outside Bend, she discovered through the art and science of camera trapping nocturnal animals, that beavers were not extinct but actively re-wilding watersheds all over Oregon and Washington!Learning everything she could about the life history of beavers, and putting her hobbies of noninvasive cameras, she is pioneering community based beaver ecology.
I believe in Planet B, as in Beaver.
Drought conditions: Beaver dams holding water for 39% other species .
Polluted urban watersheds: Beaver dams are natural bio-filters holding stormwater pollutants.
Hot water: Fish like cool, clean water and beaver dams help with moderating temperature.
Beaver dams add biodiversity benefits in just 3-5 years.
BeaverInsights was founded after joining the Beaver Corps / Beaver Institute in 2020. I work with project partners to consult, design and install coexistence devices such beaver pond levelers, culvert fences, protective tree wrapping or painting within the PNW region.
My team is made up of experienced beavers and the humans that follow them.
From the mouth of the Elwha River (Coastal Watershed Institute), to high desert Deschutes River (Beaver Works Oregon & Western Beavers Cooperative), Watersheds in WA State (BeaversNorthwest).
Longfellow Creek, Seattle WA (BeaverInsights ).
Would you like to know your local beavers?How many in your local family. Did they have spring kits? Where are they denning? Seasonal water level changes effecting daily patterns? What they are eating? Basically, what they are doing on your property at night while you are sleeping!
They are free, or by donation.
Would you like to know your local beavers?How many in your local family. Did they have spring kits? Where are they denning? Seasonal water level changes effecting daily patterns? What they are eating? Basically, what they are doing on your property at night while you are sleeping!
They are free, or by donation.
City Beaver Kits Available
We have camera locations learning about beavers in Bend, OR, The Elwha River, WA, Chimacum Creek, WA, Dunawi Creek, Corvallis, OR, Longfellow Creek, WA, VT and NH. It's easy to get started and remote training available.
Check out the new trailer for a documentary in the works by Kay D. Ray. We are seeking some TAX DEDUCTIBLE funding to finish this film. Please email me: pamela@beaverinsights.com for more info. THANKS!
Check out the ASMR "BeaverCalm" of unedited trail camera footage in a remote section of LFC with the whole beaver family eating and grooming. Watch this before bed for a restful happy sleep.
February 16, 2024
Longfellow Creek, Seattle, WA
The last weeks rain event brought a lot of water rushing down the creek, but not one of the 12 dams I watch were breached. From trail cameras observations, no beavers are really working on dams, even though there are holes in them, and the water level in the creek is dowThe downstream flow of debris seems to be auto damming. The family did not come out of the lodge much for the rain event days but now the rains have stopped the adult beavers are doing a lot of lodge building. More than usual.
This is a salmon spawning creek in the city of Seattle. There are four beaver families living in four sections of creek. Yancy Lodge beavers, Golf Course beavers, Graham St. lodge beavers, and the HomeDepot beavers. Three of these families had three kits each May 2023. These beavers are adapting to an urban riparian complex, even swimming under pipes to stay in connection with their creek. There is also water quality issues here. Ground zero for 6-PPD-Q studies and data.
NOVEMBER 15, 2023 The beaver family is living with a pond leveler since late August. New dam making downstream is active and Beaver Insights Corvallis photographer, Debi Murk is on the scene monitoring. Here a beaver and nutria have a face to face. Good to see the beaver is large and in charge! More at the FB Group Page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/312641881612675
AUGUST 2023 This past August I worked with Western Beaver Cooperative, and a myriad of organizations to install a pond leveler inside a beaver dam in Dunawi Creek. So far all is going great for the humans and the beavers. Debi Murk, a local wildlife photographer is partnering with me on monitoring the beavers and other wildlife via a BeaverInsights City Beavers Trail Cam Kit. For More info. check out the FB Group page at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/312641881612675
OCTOBER 21 2023 Today was fun!
Salmon and beaver dams in drought conditions, one morning's observations on Oct. 2 2023. More to follow as the salmon migration is not in full swing yet here in Seattle, WA.
One Minute Unedited Trail Cam Magic Video #1 Dam Building Magic September 15 2023 Seattle, WA.
Photo by Tom Reese using a long stick GoPro not to scare the fish.
These wild coho fry are almost a year old. They grew up from eggs under a beaver dam in Longfellow Creek, Seattle, WA. It's almost a year for them. New adult coho are also spawning under this place as of January 2024, it's a thriving place for fry in a few locations below the large beaver dam.
If the beavers did not build this dam a few years ago, the low flows due to drought conditions would likely not have contributed to this life. Nature is doing her best work here despite this creek being in a ditch rather a floodplain, drought and inundated with stormwater pollutants.
Yes, this is the very creek that 6-PPD-Q was first discovered to be causing pre-spawn mortality (PSM) in over 30% of the coho that have come into the creek to spawn in 2022 and 2023. (Puget SoundKeepers Alliance monitoring estimate-not published as yet.)
What happens under a beaver dam, stays under a beaver dam!
Until it's a super smolt
Don't Panic: Call Animal Control (206) 386-7387. OR our local wildlife rescue tech Wonder Woman: Kersti Muul (360)317-4646; Or myself, Pamela (415)887-8242.
LINKS TO PAWS.org , Animal Control/Animal Shelter
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