A recent increase in beaver activity along the Elwha nearshore is good news for the juvenile salmon population.

In a video posted by the CWI in December, a beaver can be seen in the area nearshore, digging and chopping down a tree.

The nearshore, where the Elwha River meets the Strait of Juan de Fuca, is critical to salmon spawning. Many young salmon spend time in the estuary acclimating to saltwater before they head out to the ocean. Beavers improve the habitat for the juvenile salmon populations in that area.

“Beavers are ecological engineers,” said Anne Shaffer, lead scientist with the CWI. “They allow water to flow, to channelize. They increase the ecological productivity of the area.”

After the Elwha Dam removal in 2011 and the Glines Canyon Dam in 2014, the nearshore changed dramatically, the National Parks Service has stated. With renewed sediment flow, sandy beaches are reappearing, and nearshore habitats that once provided rich shellfish beds are re-emerging.

The CWI works to restore the ecosystem along the Elwha shoreline. Monitoring salmon and beaver populations in the nearshore is part of their work.

Since 2013, Shaffer said, the CWI had seen beavers in the nearshore, digging channels in the water, building dams, and cut back tree growth.

But in May, a dead beaver was found along the west levee of the Elwha river nearshore. Shaffer said the cause of death was unknown, but that the body found indicated a larger animal, such as a dog, could have been the cause.

“When the beaver was killed, the area went quiet until a couple of months ago,” Shaffer said, noting that after one beaver died, (researchers) did not see any other beavers in the area for several months. Beavers reside in a small colony, which consists of two adult parents, a couple “yearlings” (adolescents) who learn building techniques from the parents, and the “kits” or baby beavers. Shaffer said when one beaver dies, it can cause the colony to leave the area.

“What’s fascinating to me is that for a long time nobody understood that beavers inhabited these coastal, intertidal habitats,” said Ben Goldfarb, who recently write his book “Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter.”

It wasn’t until scientist Gregory Hood published a study in 2012 on beavers along the Skagit River that the importance of beavers in coastal areas became known, said Goldfarb.

“Greg Hood found beavers were inhabiting intertidal areas by huge entities and that they were creating dams that made great habitat for salmon,” Goldfarb said.

Hood found that beaver dam-created tidal pools supported three times as many juvenile Chinook salmon at low tide than did the surrounding shallow areas.

“Beavers are also diggers. They dig lots of burrows into the banks of the river,” Goldfarb said. “At the Elwha we actually saw lots of juvenile fish hanging out inside the mouths of these burrows.”

But the nearshore beavers are also vulnerable. With a new set of beavers in the area, Shaffer said it is critical that people keep their dogs on leashes.

“In our own Place Road habitat near the western Elwha delta, the frequency of domestic dogs to the nearshore ecosystem has also dramatically increased,” wrote former CWI scientist Breyanna Waldsmith in a blog post. “If beavers do not return to the area, the ecosystem will alter over time; connectivity will be reduced, dredging of the side channel will not be maintained, and sediment may infill the most critical west side channel of the Elwha delta.”