Local News

There Are Four Baby Beavers Living in Ridgefield Right Now, and You Can Watch Them

The Cowlitz Indian Tribe just launched a live stream of four baby beaver kits born right here on April 16th — and it is, genuinely, the best thing happening on the internet right now. Here's what the Kit Cam is, why it exists, and why it matters more than you might think for the waterways around Ridgefield.

The Cowlitz Kit Cam — live until the four kits are released into the wild. Fair warning: it is difficult to stop watching.

The Cowlitz Indian Tribe runs the largest beaver relocation program in Washington state — and one of the largest in the entire western United States. Each year, around 70 beavers are moved from areas where they're creating conflicts with people to places where they can do what beavers do best: build dams, flood meadows, and make wetlands that nearly every other species in the Pacific Northwest depends on.

This spring, a mother and her four kits are being temporarily housed at a facility on the Cowlitz reservation while wildlife professionals work to reunite any remaining family members. Keeping families together dramatically improves survival rates after relocation. Once they're ready — which could be any day — this family will be released into carefully selected habitat and monitored for their impact.

Until then, you can watch them on the Kit Cam.

But First, They Need Names

Four kits. All born April 16. The Cowlitz program calls them kits — a perfectly good name — but if the Kardashians have taught us anything, it's that a family of four deserves a naming theme. And given that it's the Kit Cam, the case for K names is basically already made.

We propose the following, submitted with full sincerity:

The Cowlitz Tribe has not officially named them, so we're calling it open season. Watch the cam long enough and you'll assign your own names anyway. It happens to everyone.

Why Beavers, and Why Does This Matter Here

It's easy to enjoy the Kit Cam purely as a feel-good news story — four fuzzy kits tumbling around with their mom is objectively delightful — but the program behind it is doing serious conservation work, and some of it lands close to home.

Beavers were heavily reduced across the Pacific Northwest by fur trapping and habitat loss over the past two centuries, and their populations still haven't fully recovered in most areas. That matters because beavers aren't just charming — they're a foundation species. When beavers move into a watershed, they build dams that slow water, raise the water table, create wetlands, improve water quality, and support fish populations. They essentially do landscape restoration for free, and they do it better and more durably than most engineered solutions.

The water trail that runs 32 miles through Ridgefield's waterways — past the National Wildlife Refuge, along Lake River, to the Columbia — is exactly the kind of habitat where a relocated beaver family can have an outsized effect. The Refuge already has beavers. Anyone who's paddled a kayak out there during the Big Paddle or on a quiet morning has probably seen the chewed stumps and lodge mounds along the banks. This program is part of the reason that population is recovering.

The Cowlitz people have called this land home since long before it was called Ridgefield. The village of Cathlapotle — one of the largest Chinookan settlements on the Columbia — sat on what is now the Carty Unit of the Refuge. Running the largest beaver relocation program in the state is a form of land stewardship that goes back much further than any state wildlife agency.

How Long Can You Watch

The Kit Cam stays live until the four kits are released. There's no official timeline on that — the Tribe moves families when they're ready and when the right habitat is available. Could be weeks, could be longer. Given that the kits were born April 16th, they're still very young and have a fair amount of developing to do before they can survive on their own in the wild.

In the meantime: the cam is free, it's live, and watching a pile of baby beavers navigate their first weeks of life is a perfectly reasonable way to spend a Tuesday afternoon. You have our full support.