Senate committee opens public hearing on bill to limit beaver trapping on impaired public waterways

SALem, Ore., May 6 — The Oregon Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Wildfire on Tuesday opened a public hearing on House Bill 39 32 a, a proposal that would prohibit taking beavers in designated impaired waterways on public lands and direct the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) and the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to coordinate mapping and protections.

Supporters told the committee that beavers act as “nature’s engineers,” improving water quality, recharging groundwater and creating fish and wildlife habitat, and argued the bill would protect beavers where restoration investments are underway. Opponents said the measure would substitute legislative action for the ODFW Commission’s management authority, risk unintended impacts on infrastructure and rural livelihoods, and create near‑permanent closures by tying protections to DEQ’s impaired‑waters list.

Representative Pam Marsh, the bill sponsor, told the panel that HB 39 32 a would “allow beavers to perform their natural benefits on waterways within public lands that have been identified as impaired by the Oregon D.E.Q.” She said the bill preserves tribal rights, allows limited take to address damage to infrastructure or adjacent private property with ODFW authorization, and includes an off‑ramp if a stream is removed from DEQ’s impaired list for six consecutive years.

Dr. Katie Holzer, senior environmental scientist for the city of Gresham, summarized local monitoring and experiments showing water‑quality improvements in the presence of beaver dams. “The dam dams more than doubled the removal of most priority pollutants,” she said, and added that older, deeper beaver ponds can provide cold‑water refuges for native fish by creating thermal stratification.

Restoration practitioners emphasized that volunteer and agency investments can be undermined if beavers recolonizing restored sites are trapped. Jefferson Jacobs, who has worked on beaver‑based restoration for 17 years, said, “Dead beavers don’t build dams. Dead beavers don't maintain or improve habitat.” Multiple conservation groups — including Defenders of Wildlife, Cascadia Wildlands and the Oregon Association of Conservation Districts — testified in support of the bill.

Opponents included rural lawmakers and hunting and trapping organizations who argued the measure would remove professional wildlife managers from decisions and could harm rural communities. Senate Vice Chair Todd Nash said trappers are local partners and warned that the bill would “blanketly” restrict trapping across large areas. Isaac Insko, chief of staff to Representative Bobby Levy, testified in opposition, arguing the bill “ultimately undermines science‑based wildlife management” and that once a waterway is listed by DEQ it is “extremely difficult, if not impossible, to remove.”

Charles Whitlam of Howl for Wildlife told the committee that the Fish and Wildlife Commission and ODFW have repeatedly considered similar proposals and concluded regulated trapping is not limiting beaver abundance. “This bill disregards that record and freezes policy and statute,” he said, urging the committee to leave wildlife harvest policy to the commission.

The committee heard technical and policy clarifications from ODFW’s deputy director Sean Clements, who said the Fish and Wildlife Commission has discussed beaver issues multiple times since 2020 and that the agency developed a Beaver Action Plan organized around data and science, habitat restoration, beaver management and outreach.

Multiple witnesses cited the same data points in different ways: ODFW’s 2024 report was cited that about 4% of reported beaver harvest occurs on state and federal public lands combined, while proponents stressed that 96% of reported harvest is on private lands and that HB 39 32 a would not affect private‑land trapping. Proponents also told the committee that DEQ’s impaired‑waters list is updated on a statutory schedule and that protections linked to that list would target waterways with temperature, sediment, dissolved oxygen or invertebrate health problems.

The bill allows exceptions for removal of beavers when necessary to address damage to infrastructure or adjacent private property; it also states it does not supersede rights of federally recognized tribes or cooperative tribal‑agency management agreements, according to testimony.

Procedurally, the committee carried over a work session on House Bill 3,342 a until Thursday, May 8, and opened and later closed the public hearing on HB 39 32 a. No committee vote on HB 39 32 a was taken at Tuesday’s hearing; members heard consecutive panels of supporters and opponents and allowed public testimony, with many speakers limited to two minutes.

What’s next: The record remains open for written testimony through the committee’s deadline and the committee may schedule further work sessions or a vote in a future meeting. Committee members and witnesses repeatedly said they expected further data from ODFW’s Beaver Action Plan and other monitoring efforts to inform any final decision.

— Reported from testimony to the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Wildfire on May 6, 2025. All quotes are from committee testimony or official staff remarks.