By Audrey Taub
The fall has always been my favorite season but now there is another reason why I love the fall: our river surveys. Starting in September, we began our survey of the Upper Salinas River, surveying from the SLO County line to the Salinas Dam, logging the beaver activity and invasive reeds .
A few of the Beaver Dams We Surveyed
Some of the Invasive Reeds
Each day we cover long stretches of the river, some sections we are trudging through waist deep of water, others hot and dry. But regardless, always an adventure.
Some of the things we see in the river bed aren’t expected.
Lots of native plants as well
Some great beaver chews.
I love this one of a downed cottonwood tree. It was a good sized tree that the beavers had felled, so much sap still coming out of the tree, and the best part, the shoots coming out of the stump. That tree will live.
In some areas of the Salinas , we see signs of human activity:
And scat showing lots mammal activity
Sediment?
And if you’ve ever wondered how much sediment actually flows in the Salinas, this photo might give you an idea.
Outcomes
We have a few goals with this survey, one of them is to come up with a map where we have persistent beaver activity. Here is our 2025 map. Will 2026 look the same? We’ll let you know when we are done!
