Take Action to Protect Oregon’s Beavers

Bird Alliance of Oregon and numerous other conservation groups, scientists and community groups have petitioned the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) to increase protections for beavers by banning beaver trapping on federally managed public lands in Oregon. Please submit a comment to ODFW supporting this petition.

Beavers have been called “ecosystem engineers.” Their activities are critical to protecting water quality, creating habitat, groundwater recharge, and promoting biodiversity. They are a critical part of healthy northwest wetland ecosystems. Unfortunately Oregon has treated its official state animal more like a pest than an integral part of a healthy ecosystem. 

The petition to the ODFW Commission would amend the State’s furbearer regulations to prevent commercial and recreational trapping of beaver on federal lands in Oregon.

A portrait of a Beaver eating vegetation. The head and body are visible, but not the tail.
Photo by CatDancing

How You Can Help

Please send the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Commission an email to odfw.commission@state.or.us today urging them to adopt the petition eliminating commercial and recreational killing of beaver on federal lands. Put “Beaver Closure on Federal Lands” in the subject line. 

Email ODFW

Talking Points

  1. You support the petition to ban commercial and recreational trapping of beaver on public federal lands
  2. Beaver are a critical part of a healthy ecosystem including creating wetlands, improving water quality, groundwater recharge and improving fish and wildlife habitat.
  3. Protecting beaver is even more important in an age of climate change as beaver dams will be critical for retaining water that will be released by earlier melting snowpack.
  4. Protecting beaver on public federal lands rather than making them available for commercial and recreational hunting is consistent with ODFW’s core mission to protect Oregon’s fish and wildlife and restore natural ecosystems.