A week before Easter celebrations, San Luis Obispo Mission Plaza buzzed with excitement about a very different animal with big whiskers and two buck teeth.
More than 1,000 visitors came out on April 1 to celebrate the first-ever SLO Beaver Festival, an event hosted by the SLO Beaver Brigade to raise awareness about the river rodent and all it does to help the environment.
Families moseyed through the plaza all day to get their faces painted, build their own dams using sticks and clay, and hear musicians, scientists, and activists sing the beaver's praises.
"The festival was so fun. It blew our minds how excited everyone was," said Audrey Taub, co-founder of the SLO Beaver Brigade. "One thing we realized when we started the Beaver Brigade: There's almost like a beaver movement happening in the country. People are really catching on."
The beaver movement is in full swing in SLO County. Even before the successful festival, the SLO Beaver Brigade has been scoring victories that are a testament to the momentum it's built since forming in 2019.
In February, the nonprofit sold out its first-ever fundraiser at Castoro Cellars and also received a coveted California Coastal Commission "Whale Tail" grant for $41,480.
That grant will help the Brigade expand its free educational tours of beaver habitats in the Salinas River to twice monthly. It will also pay for the installation of interpretive panels along the De Anza Trail in Atascadero and to commission a mural of a beaver habitat at the Charles Paddock Zoo.
"It's been so exciting," Taub told New Times. "This began in 2020 and it really started around a conversation about climate change and what can we be doing. Supporting the beavers has been the thing. It just seemed like this is what we can do. And it's fun."
Taub started the Beaver Brigade with a small but mighty group of fellow enthusiasts. She became enraptured by the animal during her regular visits to their habitats along the Salinas River, a stone's throw from her home in Atascadero.
"Ever since I moved here in 2005, it's been my little playground," Taub said. "I'd tell people there's this beautiful beaver habitat, and they'd say, 'There's no beavers in this county!' Nobody believed me. People grew up here and had no idea."
Her goal with the organization is to generate excitement and awareness about beavers' contributions to the environment. By simply being alive, she explained, beavers do wonders for nature. Their dams help with groundwater recharge, wildfire suppression, flood control, carbon sequestration, and more.
"They're very slow on land so their mode of survival is to create a dam to have a pond so they can get to their food without getting on land. That's all they're trying to do," Taub said. "But these dams—it creates a beautiful habitat. What it's doing is spreading the water out around the landscape, and you have this thick, lush, riparian zone. And then the water is slowly trickling in and replenishing the groundwater."
One fact about beavers that resonates with locals is how their habitats can act as fire breaks, she said. Taub likes to show people a blown-up photo of a wildfire around a beaver dam to prove a point.
"As far as the eye can see is charcoal and then there's a beaver habitat in the center, where it's wet and lush and beautiful. There's something about that visual photo that makes a big impact with people," Taub said. "All the issues in California—the wildfires, the droughts, even the floods—beaver dams can kind of slow the intensity."
Taub credits much of the Beaver Brigade's growth to an early connection she made with Emily Fairfax, a professor at Cal State Channel Islands who studies beavers. After seeing how beavers thrive in the area, Fairfax has made the Salinas River a focal point in her research, giving it a bigger platform.
"All of sudden, it just gave so much momentum and interest in what we're doing," Taub said.
Looking ahead, Taub said the group is evaluating how it can best harness the interest from the community. That means expanding habitat tours, doing more river cleanups, and putting on more events like the Beaver Festival. It also means collaborating with landowners to help resolve conflicts with beavers and working with local agencies to install beaver dam analogs that mimic the effects of beaver dams.
Regardless of what's next, in the wake of the festival, the Beaver Brigade is appreciating the way that the animal is bringing the community together.
"There's something about beavers that I feel kind of crosses the party line," Taub said. "The ranchers get it as much as the environmentalists get it. It's not like it's one side or the other. It's a place we can come together and agree: This animal is helping us."
• The Marine Mammal Center in Morro Bay is seeking volunteers to fill roles in animal rescue and response, care, transport, and conservation education. "Volunteer service here at the center is especially critical as we approach the busy seal pupping season here along the Central Coast," a press release from the nonprofit read. To sign up as a mammal center volunteer, visit marinemammalcenter.org and register for a May 6 volunteer orientation. Δ
Reach Assistant Editor Peter Johnson at pjohnson@newtimesslo.com.