On the morning of Oct. 11, the Tualatin Riverkeepers, the Mayor of Tigard, a Tualatin City Councilor and other volunteers collaborated on a Fanno Creek restoration project engineered by a beaver.
For the past two years, a swampy strip of land stretching between the Fanno Pointe Condominiums and the Tigard Public Library has been busy with beaver activity. A dam constructed by Oregon’s state animal has transformed a trickling rivulet into something like a marsh.
After watching the rodent-ran renovation project from his nearby condo, project organizer Jorge Orozco decided to pitch an idea to his Tualatin Riverkeepers coworkers.
“Ok this critter moved into this space that, at one point, was really abused and now it’s flooded,” Orozco said. “But something like the state animal, to me, was an incredible pride point and I thought, ‘we have something incredibly special in our backyard.’”
After the City of Tigard made unsuccessful attempts to drive the beavers out of the area, Orozco decided the Riverkeepers could embrace the beaver’s vision, which had backed up streamflow and created a shallow pool of standing water.
“Over the years, beavers have come, they’ve been removed, and they’ve come back,” Tualatin Riverkeepers Volunteer Organizer Carly Morrison told Tigard Life. “Seeing that they were removed once and they came back and built the dam, Jorge was inspired to do restoration work and build off of the habitat that the beavers already created to make it more biodiverse and supportive of the many different organisms that are now interacting with this area because the beaver has built the foundation for habitat with its dam.”
Orozco and the volunteers removed invasive plants, added mulch and put protective fencing around trees to make sure that the local beavers didn’t overdo it. Morrison said that while the restoration built on beaver blueprints, the Riverkeepers didn’t want to inspire further renovations.
“This area is really too small to support more beaver activity,” Morrison said. “Ultimately we don’t want to encourage the beaver to continue moving up this stream as it goes into the neighborhood.”
The Riverkeepers secured a $5,000 Tualatin Watershed Improvement Grant for the project, and to honor his role in organizing the effort, Orozco received the 2026 Green Heron award at the Oct. 5 Tualatin River Keepers Green Heron Gala.
“He [Orozco] has done an amazing job restoring it into a freshwater amazing place, instead of just a muddy culvert full of garbage,” said Tualatin Riverkeepers Board Member and Tualatin City Councilor Bridget Brooks.
That Sunday, Tigard Mayor Yi-Kang Hu was out shoveling fresh mulch with volunteers and stopped to tell Tigard Life that the city was currently looking to find the “right balance” between the beavers and residents.
“I just heard from a resident, who said that due to the beaver dam, the water is creeping up to her back porch, and so that’s an issue as well,” Hu said. “We always try to find the right balance between nature and human beings.”
Beaver activity at the site hadn’t always proved positive for all parties, with beavers at one point knocking a tree onto Hall Boulevard. Orozco said that although beavers were once a concern for residents, since renovation work began, their destructive bouts have been declining.
“There was a lot of concern about if we let the beaver stay here, is it gonna knock a tree through my elderly neighbor’s window?” Orozco said. “Since then (when renovation started), it’s only been uphill. I attend the board meetings pretty frequently to provide updates on how the pond’s coming, and every time I just get more feedback from the HOA president and the community that they’re increasingly more on board with what’s going on here.”
Tualatin Riverkeepers plan to return on Oct. 31 to continue planting. According to Morrison, work at the site is slated for completion in February 2027.
