U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service<\/a>. The number has been slowly falling since the 1800s, resulting in a loss of one-third of the original wetlands. <\/p>\nIn the past few months, AZGFD has seen a resurgence in the wetlands along a stretch of the San Pedro River. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen native cottonwood, willow trees and saplings just rebound,” said Angie Stingelin, Senior Wildlife Specialist with the department. “We\u2019ve had species come back in that we haven\u2019t seen in years in certain stretches of the river.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stingelin and her colleagues give some of the credit to a few of their newer team members: two relocated “nuisance beavers.”<\/p>\n
The male and female beaver\u2014 who are not given names to keep a separation between man and nature\u2014 were taken from upstate Arizona, where wildlife specialist Ryan Pernu says they were “blocking irrigation ditches and they were blocking drainages and flooding areas that didn\u2019t need to be flooded.\u201d<\/p>\n
The department was hoping to harness the beaver’s natural dam-building instincts to slow down the flow of the San Pedro, allowing the river to expand and hold water longer during drier months.<\/p>\n
A few months later, they’ve started seeing results.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis beaver built up this dam just in the past couple of weeks and has really ponded the water back\u2026 maybe like a few hundred meters back. The water was only a couple feet wide. Now it\u2019s like 5 to 6 feet wide.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stingelin added that the river’s surface flow has increased by one to two miles. <\/p>\n
They say that extra water has helped sprout more plants\u2014 both seasonal and year-round\u2014and brought more animals to the banks of the river.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince we have surface water, we see animals come down from the uplands and they\u2019ll come down here to drink water,” Pernu said “It\u2019ll get dry in mountains and the foothills, and they\u2019re looking for any water source, and this is one of the biggest ones down here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though AZGFD is tracking the female beaver with a GPS, the mammals can stay on the San Pedro River for as long as they’d like. Stingelin says, “they move around and shift as the river shifts and forage values shift.\u201d<\/p>\n
With monsoon on the horizon, she says only time will tell how long they’ll stick around.<\/p>\n
If you encounter a “nuisance beaver” near your property, contact AZGFD<\/a> for the next steps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TUCSON, Ariz. \u2014 The Arizona Game and Fish Department is trying out a new technique to restore Arizona…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":79026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[54473,54474,54475,54476,54477,54478,26917,54479,54480,54481,159,67,132,68,837],"class_list":{"0":"post-79025","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-arizona-beavers","9":"tag-arizona-department-of-game-and-fish","10":"tag-arizona-game-and-fish-department","11":"tag-arizona-wetlands","12":"tag-azdgf","13":"tag-azgfd","14":"tag-beavers","15":"tag-game-and-fish","16":"tag-san-pedro-beavers","17":"tag-san-pedro-river","18":"tag-science","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114887786763369066","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}