'This is unusual': Recent spate of busy beavers in Phoenix, Tempe has rescuers bewildered

A beaver is hopefully headed home for the holidays after being rescued from an Arcadia backyard on Tuesday.

Two cyclists found the animal in the street and contacted Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center in Scottsdale, which specializes in rehabbing orphaned, injured or lost wild mammals. Kim Carr, animal care manager at the conservation center, said the call came in around 9 p.m.

"I asked them if they could stay and wait and just watch it, because I know that's one of our challenges as rescuers, is if someone doesn't have eyes on the animal, if they move, especially at night, there's no way for us to able to find it," she said. "They were so nice. They said, 'Absolutely, we will stay as long as it takes. We are invested.'"

The busy beaver eventually moved to the backyard of a home near 44th Street and Osborn Road. When Carr arrived, she found it contently gnawing on a tree.

"It had almost gnawed through half of that tree by the time I got there," she said. "It was completely unfazed by the crowd that was forming around it."

The animal is one of three beavers that have been recently found in the Valley.

In early December, a healthy male was rescued from a backyard near Camelback Road and 44th Street in Phoenix. The third one, an injured female that seemed to have been struck by a car, was discovered near the Pyle Recreation Center in Tempe on Nov. 17.

Carr mentioned that the most recent beaver is "pretty big" and "appears healthy." Rescuers have not yet conducted a full examination of the animal and are uncertain of its sex. Determining the sex of beavers requires sedation, as they have internal reproductive organs, and a veterinarian needs to perform the examination.

Once the beaver gets some X-rays and a quick check-up, Carr said the conservation center intends to release it back into the wild "as quickly as possible."

"We do not want to keep any of the beavers — they belong back in the river system," she said. "They really will be going soon."

Beavers in the Valley?

Carr said beavers are native to waterways around Arizona. The conservation center estimates that there about 200 beavers in the wild statewide.

"We do have beavers here, they're just not as prevalent as they would be someplace where there's a lot more water," Carr said.

Occasionally, the critters turn up in the Phoenix metro area. In 2015, a giant 44-pound specimen was pulled out of Tempe Town Lake with a net. A few years later, another was busted napping on a couch someone had dumped into Phoenix's Grand Canal.

Usually, the animals find their way into local canals by taking a wrong turn away from their river homes.

"They must come in from the river systems because you're not just going to find a bunch of beavers living in Phoenix and dipping into the canals and coming out," Carr said. "They're coming from wild waterways... and then, they just aren't seeming to find their way back."

The beavers are perfectly safe when they hang out in canals and man-made lakes, Carr said. But they often run into trouble when they leave the water to find food.

Beavers eat bark and soft tree tissues, which is often difficult for them to find nearby in urban surroundings. Once they start crossing roads, they are hard for drivers to see and at risk of being run over.

"They're just such awful land animals because they're really low to the ground, they're really dark colored and they're nocturnal," Carr said. "So that's just a surefire way for them to get hit by cars, is to be wandering around at night in the street."

Why are so many beavers turning up?

Finding a beaver in the Valley is normal every once in a while, Carr said. But three in the span of two months is unusual.

"Usually, we'll get one beaver every five years or something," Carr said.

Plus, the conservation center is also currently housing an orphaned female beaver from northern Arizona.

Carr said she and other rescuers are perplexed by the sudden influx of beavers. She speculated that beavers might previously have had better luck finding their way home to the river system, or died before anyone noticed their presence.

While nobody knows why the critters are suddenly appearing, one thing is certain — this is the most beavers at one time that the conservation center has ever housed.

"It's just so many of them," Carr said. "This is unusual."

Sasha Hupka covers county government and regional issues for The Arizona Republic. She has never seen a beaver in Phoenix. Do you have a tip? Reach her at sasha.hupka@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @SashaHupka. Follow her on Instagram or Threads: @sashahupkasnaps.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: 'This is unusual': Spate of busy beavers abound in Phoenix, Tempe