She’s like a toddler with a huge personality — screaming or slapping her tail until she gets what she wants.
“The first month it is like having a newborn baby,” said Ralee Barth, operations manager at the Alberta Institute for Wildlife Conservation.
“They want things, but you don’t know what they want and you want her to eat because you know she must be hungry, but she won’t take anything from you — they can’t tell you. There definitely were tears sometimes when she just wouldn’t eat.”
But this is no ordinary family member. It’s a baby beaver, brought to the wildlife centre in Madden, Alta., in the spring of 2024, after being rescued near Edmonton.
“A member of the public had found her after she’d been kicked out of her house by her family,” said Barth. “They watched it for a bit and once it was confirmed that they weren’t taking her back, they went in and rescued and transferred her to us.”
The baby beaver was brought to the Alberta Institute for Wildlife Conservation near Calgary in the spring of 2024 after it had been rejected by its family near Edmonton.
Courtesy: AIWC
Diagnosed with gastrointestinal issues, the staff at AIWC had to nurse her back to health.
“So taking in a beaver is so different than taking in anything else,” said Barth. “They have a lot of really special requirements from their diet to how they go to the bathroom to what they need — so when she first came in, she had to be formula fed about five or six times a day.”
But baby beavers aren’t like other animals that the wildlife centre rescues.
Ralee Barth, operations manager at the AIWC, says baby beavers are unlike other animals they’ve rescued because they need to develop a strong bond with a family unit — in this case, just a few staff members.
Courtesy: AIWC
Animals like bear cubs need to be prevented from becoming too habituated to humans — beavers on the other hand need to bond closely with a family unit.
“So me and one of our other staff members kind of became her primary caregivers,” said Barth. “We raised her up for the first bit in our house, swam in our bathtub, so that she felt that we were her family. And then once she really bonded to us, we started bringing her into the clinic setting.”
In the interest of keeping the bond between staff and the beaver growing too strong, she has not been given a name.
But it’s still exciting to watch her grow and reaching, as Barth described them, her beaver milestones.
“Like the first time she started chewing on a branch. She dove underneath the water and swam. We were just screaming with excitement.”
Staff at the AIWC say watching the baby beaver grow and experience events like her first swim or chewing her first stick has been very exciting and gratifying.
Courtesy: AIWC
“Her personality is huge,” said Barth. “If you give her a snack or her breakfast and it is not exactly what she wants, she’ll scream or tail slaps, or you’ll bring her dinner and she goes and she picks through it and just takes the best treats out of it first and she finally eats the good stuff for her later.”
“She’s just so unbelievably awkward, like watching a toddler learn to do everything — she will be walking and then just fall. Or she’ll take these sticks that are like 83 times bigger than she is.”
The young beaver, seen practicing her building skills at the AIWC, will eventually be released back into the wild — likely in the spring of 2026.
Courtesy: AIWC
The goal is eventually to release her back into the wild — likely in the spring of 2026 — because baby beavers normally spend about two years with their parents.
But she needs to be ready, showing signs of wanting to venture out on their own and able to find their own food.
It also needs to be the right location.
“Releasing beavers is not like releasing anything else,” said Barth. “They are extremely territorial, so if there is an already a beaver that is set up there it would be really dangerous for her. But we also don’t want to just release her into a random body of water where she’s going to start damming and create issues in the environment.”
Barth says that while it’s always so hard on the staff, the release is also the most rewarding.
In the interest of preventing the beaver from becoming too habituated to humans, it has only been allowed to bond with two of the AIWC staff members.
Courtesy: AIWC
“You know, we spend a lot of time with these animals, even if it’s from afar — we spend so much time with them. The beaver is unique in that we spend a lot more time up close than we typically would,” Barth said.
“But getting to see them go back to the wild, seeing all that hard work pay off is unlike anything I know how to explain. It’s absolutely amazing.”
