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California brought back beavers for the first time in 70 years, and the results are already amazing

Native wisdom and ancient rock paintings save the day.

Photo credit: Canva and CDFW.

Checking in on California's beaver project.

Deep in the Sierra Nevada foothills on the Tule River Indian Reservation, tribal member Kenneth McDarment had passed by an ochre-red pictograph countless times throughout his life—a simple yet unmistakable image of a beaver with four paws and a distinctive paddle tail. Estimated to be between 500 and 1,000 years old, this ancient artwork adorned the walls of a rock shelter alongside other paintings of wildlife, humans, and geometric designs created by the Yokuts people.

To McDarment, this beaver image seemed like just another beautiful piece of Native art. That is until he looked at it again—this time seeing it clearly with fresh eyes.

beaver, project, california, environment, sustainability Newly introduced beaver swimming through the water.Credit: CDFW

When severe drought struck the reservation about a decade ago, McDarment and other tribal leaders began searching for innovative ways to conserve water. The answer, it turned out, had been staring at them from the cave walls all along.

"Sometimes you need to just look at things more often," McDarment told researchers.

Glancing back up at the beaver, the pictograph suddenly took on new meaning as McDarment and the other tribal leaders began to recognize the ancient wisdom embedded in their ancestors' art. If beavers had once thrived on these lands and helped manage water resources, perhaps bringing them back could address their contemporary drought challenges. This revelation prompted the tribe to pursue what would become California's first beaver restoration program in over seven decades.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

From ancient wisdom to modern partnership

The revelation sparked an unprecedented collaboration between California's Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) and Native tribes. In the past, the Tule River Tribe and the Maidu Summit Consortium were dismissed, and told there was "no way to move beavers in California legally."

But after years of advocacy and preparation, in 2021, California finally launched its first beaver restoration program since the 1950s in partnership with both tribes.

On October 18, 2023, seven beavers were released into their new home in Tásmam Koyóm, a 2,325-acre valley in Plumas County.

"You just saw this tiny brown furball, this little nugget, catch a ride on the back of his sibling's tail, and it looked like he was surfing. I don't think it set in for days afterward, but that moment will go down as one of the highlights of my entire career. I think we were very proud of what we had done, and really optimistic about the potential that this represents for us and the good we think we can do moving forward." - Valerie Cook, the beaver restoration program manager for the CDFW.


beaver, project, california, environment, sustainability Beavers being released to explore their new territory. Credit: CDFW

Where did they find the beavers? Set a few traps and catch as many as they could? No. The efforts presented in this project represented a fundamental shift in how California approaches wildlife management and water conservation. The beaver relocation process involved identifying "problem" beavers in areas where they caused flooding, and then safely transporting them to new locations where their engineering skills could work environmental magic. For the first time in nearly 75 years, the state began relocating beavers.

"We can make our future different from our past," declared CDFW Director Charlton H. Bonham during the historic first release. "Our past is one where we treated these animals and others as varmints, as nuisances, and our culture over time ran them off the landscape. That can't be our future".

Nature's ultimate engineers get to work

The results have been nothing short of spectacular. At the Maidu Summit Consortium's Tásmam Koyóm meadow—which means "tall grass" in the Mountain Maidu language—relocated beavers have constructed an impressive 328-foot dam, effectively creating a massive wetland complex that has increased water coverage by more than 22% according to CDFW's April 2025 report.

beaver, project, california, environment, sustainability Dams like these offer shelter, a safe home for beavers, and food storage. Image by John Cannon/Mongabay.

"They are really powerful ecosystem engineers," Emily Fairfax, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Minnesota, told Mongabay. "The number of services they provide to us and ways that they build resilient landscapes is honestly too much to just rattle off all at once."

The benefits extend far beyond water storage, with those furry "ecosystem engineers" essentially transforming the landscape into a climate-resilient powerhouse:

Cultural reconnection and sovereignty

For the Mountain Maidu and Tule River tribes, the beaver restoration represents much more than environmental conservation—it's a symbol of just how far they've come in reclaiming their relationship to the land. Nearly two centuries ago, Tásmam Koyóm Meadow was forcibly taken from the Mountain Maidu tribe and was not rightfully returned until 2019. Four years later, the beaver—which the Mountain Maidu call hi-chi-hi-nem and consider as family—finally returned to their land, marking a moment of healing and deeply profound spiritual significance.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Shannon Salem Williams, a Mountain Maidu program manager, said seeing the beavers slip into the water was a "full circle moment." Then added, "It was like a big welcoming home."

A blueprint for climate resilience

The success story of California's beaver restoration program proves that sometimes, the most efficient solution to modern issues is simply to return to ancient wisdom.

With climate change intensifying droughts, floods, and wildfires across the American West, beaver-based restoration is gaining recognition as a cost-effective, nature-based solution. The California program has become so successful that Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation in 2024 to make the beaver restoration program permanent.

Scientists and activists remain hopeful that this trend will continue. "I think we're in kind of an idyllic [stage of] beaver literacy," advocate Heidi Perryman said. "People have begun to hear a lot of good things about beavers, and they're very hopeful that beavers can fix everything that we've messed up."

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Native American halftime performance shows how college sports and tribes can get along

The Utes and the University of Utah have a great relationship.

via The University of Utah

"Ute Proud" game at Rice-Eccles Stadium.

On Saturday, September 17, the University of Utah played its ninth annual “Ute Proud” game against San Diego State at Rice-Eccles stadium. The game featured recognition of the Ute Tribe Business Committee and a traditional performance by the Ute tribe.

In the 1600s, the Ute tribe inhabited what is now Utah, Western Colorado and parts of Wyoming, Arizona and New Mexico.

The University of Utah uses the Ute name with permission from the tribe and is careful to note that the team’s mascot is Swoop, a red-tailed hawk. This understanding is an example of the positive relationship between the university and the tribe.

The win-win relationship stands in contrast to many college sports programs and professional teams that have appropriated Native American tribal names and customs.

In 2020, the Utes and the university signed an agreement where the tribe “encourages the University of Utah to use the Ute name for the University's sports programs with its full support.”

In return, the University provides scholarships for Ute students and educates its students on Ute history and the tribe's ongoing cultural and economic contributions to the state. It’s a wonderful example of what can happen when a sports program celebrates the positive aspects of Native American culture while also giving back to the tribe.

To celebrate this warm partnership, members of the Ute tribe shared a traditional performance during halftime of the “Ute Proud” game. The Utes beat San Diego State 35 to 7.

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Jim Thorpe's stripped Olympic gold medals have finally, officially been reinstated

A 110-year wrong has finally been righted.

Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons

Jim Thorpe dominated the competition at the 1912 Olympics in the decathlon and pentathlon events.

Jim Thorpe is widely regarded as one of the greatest athletes of all time, and many would claim he is still the greatest. Britannica describes him as "a marvel of speed, power, kicking, and all-around ability," and he excelled in multiple sports throughout his life. In 1950, he was voted the Associated Press' Athlete of the Half Century.

As a person of Sac, Fox and Potawatomi descent, Thorpe became the first Native American to win an Olympic gold medal for the United States in 1912. He dominated the decathlon and pentathlon events at the Stockholm Olympic Games that year, winning by large margins, but an investigation the following year resulted in him being stripped of his medals.

Thorpe had played semiprofessional baseball in 1909 and 1910, which, according to the stringent rules on only having amateur athletes competing in the Olympics at the time, should have disqualified him. He ended up having the gold medals he clearly deserved to win taken away due to a minor violation of a technical rule that would end up being changed anyway.

Forty years ago, the International Olympic Committee gave shared gold medals to Thorpe's family, but they did not reinstate his Olympic records or name him as the sole gold medalist in the two events he won.

Now the record has officially been corrected.

Bright Path Strong, an organization created to continue Thorpe's legacy of community service, created a petition to have Thorpe's medals and records fully reinstated. (Thorpe's Native name, Wa-Tho-Huk, means "bright path.")

“We are so grateful this nearly 110-year-old injustice has finally been corrected, and there is no confusion about the most remarkable athlete in history,” said Nedra Darling, Bright Path Strong co-founder and citizen of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, according to the Associated Press.

As it turns out, the silver medalists had never accepted the gold medals they were offered after Thorpe had been stripped of them. Bright Path Strong and IOC member Anita DeFrantz contacted decathlete Hugo Wieslander's family as well as the Swedish Olympic Committee to discuss the matter with them.

“They confirmed that Wieslander himself had never accepted the Olympic gold medal allocated to him, and had always been of the opinion that Jim Thorpe was the sole legitimate Olympic gold medalist,” said the IOC, according to the AP. “The same declaration was received from the Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederation of Sports, whose athlete, Ferdinand Bie, was named as the gold medalist when Thorpe was stripped of the pentathlon title."

Now the record has been set straight. Thorpe will officially go down in history as the sole gold medal winner of the decathlon and pentathlon in the 1912 Olympic Games.

Darling told Indian Country Today that she called Billy Mills, the Oglala Lakota runner who won gold in the 10,000 meter race in the 1964 Olympics (in one of the greatest upsets in Olympic history), after she heard the news.

“It was emotional," she said. "It was the most beautiful gift I could get to be able to tell him, and I didn’t realize it ’til he just couldn’t speak and I couldn’t speak. He’s been so supportive of what I’ve been doing.”

IOC President Thomas Bach expressed his gratitude to all involved.

“We welcome the fact that, thanks to the great engagement of Bright Path Strong, a solution could be found,” he said. “This is a most exceptional and unique situation, which has been addressed by an extraordinary gesture of fair play from the National Olympic Committees concerned.”

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Assignments that prompt students to empathize with those who committed atrocities need to go

Jennifer C. Martin/Twitter

An assignment on the Trail of Tears has prompted debate about taking historical perspectives.

Helping young people understand the causes and effects of historical events is a formidable task for any educator. History isn't just "what happened and when." There's also a "why," "how" and "who" in every historical happening, and quality history education helps students explore those questions.

Sometimes, however, that exploration can go off the rails.

Most people would agree that understanding different perspectives is an important part of learning history, but there are more and less problematic ways of helping students gain that understanding. We've seen some of the more problematic methods pop up in school assignments before, from asking students to pick cotton like slaves to listing the pros and cons of slavery.

Now an assignment from a school in Georgia is making the rounds, with people calling out issues with the perspective it asked students to take.

Jennifer C. Martin shared a photo of a computer screen from her friend's kid's school with an assignment about the Trail of Tears, telling students to write letters from the points of view listed in the questions and to use facts to support their point of view. (The Trail of Tears sometimes refers to the forced removal of several Native nations from their ancestral homelands in the Southeast in the 1830s, but also refers more specifically to the forced relocation of the Cherokee nation to Oklahoma in 1838. Thousands died of disease, exposure and starvation during the removals.)

The writing prompt on the screen reads:

"Write a letter to President Jackson from the perspective of an American settler. Explain why you think removing the Cherokee will help the United States grow and prosper."

Having written about problematic history lessons before, I know there will be people saying, "But this is just asking students to understand different perspectives! We have to be able to understand perspectives we don't agree with."

That may sound reasonable—or even desirable—but there are some problems with that line of thinking when it comes to teaching kids.

One, there's a difference between understanding someone's perspective and taking on their perspective, even as an exercise. The latter can be useful; putting yourself into someone else's shoes through "Imagine if" exercises is a good way to build empathy, helping us understand the impact of an event on a person or people. But is it desirable to build empathy with people who committed or perpetuated atrocities? I would argue it's not.

Second, the Trail of Tears is an objectively oppressive historical event. Asking students to explain the benefits of it from the perspective of the oppressors is gross. We don't need to "both sides" an oppressive event, as if there is some legitimate justification for why it happened and what the impact was. There is an explanation, of course, but when we take on a perspective and make arguments in favor of it as a personal exercise, we risk legitimizing and justifying it. This is totally unnecessary and potentially harmful.

Third, what if you were a student whose ancestors were the ones who suffered and/or died during the Trail of Tears? How would this assignment assist in your understanding of that event? It's not like you wouldn't already know that the settlers cared more about the growth and prosperity of the United States than about your people's lives, so what would be the point of this assignment for you?

If we want students to think critically about these events and look at the different perspectives that led to the tragedy of the Trail of Tears, we can ask questions that get them to think critically without making them argue the benefits from a colonizing perspective, such as:

"Why did some American settlers support the removal of the Cherokee people? What do you think about their reasoning?"

"What were the motivations behind forcing the Cherokee people off their land? How did American settlers benefit from the tragedy?"

"Were the settlers' arguments for relocating the Cherokee aligned with the American ideals of liberty and justice? Explain."

None of those writing prompts require a student to put themselves into the mindset of people who committed or supported violent injustice, but they still accomplish the goal of understanding different perspectives and getting students to think.

We need to acknowledge that history is not neutral and history lessons are not benign. There are ways to teach history that are objectively inappropriate, no matter what the intention behind them. Asking students to take the perspective of a Nazi during the Holocaust would be inappropriate. Asking students to take the perspective of a racist white person in the South during the civil rights movement would be inappropriate. It's not appropriate to ask students to think like a colonizer during the Trail of Tears. Understanding that perspectives differ does not require taking on an oppressive perspective, even as an academic exercise, and we do students a disservice by asking them to do so.


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