Kevin Tanski is a lifelong conservationist and environmentalist, but in the past three years his attention has been laser focused on beavers. As a volunteer with Think Wild’s Beaver Works Oregon, he’s traveled to remote areas of the state, putting in countless hours restoring beaver habitat.
The significance of beavers caught his attention after he read two books, “Eager” and “Beaver Land” which explore the profound impact beavers have on the environment.
“Water, climate, sustainability and resilience converge with getting beavers back in the landscape. I don’t think we have used this term before, but ecological amnesia in terms of we really don’t know what this land was like more than 200 years ago when settlers first started trapping. Beavers were virtually trapped out,” he says.
The work Tanski and other volunteers do through Beaver Works involves, among other things, planting willows, a food source for beavers. He’s worked to restore Black Butte Swamp in conjunction with the Deschutes National Forest. The creek running through that area has deepened channels and dried out vegetation. He’s improved beaver habitat at Collier State Park and worked with the Burns Paiute Tribe along the Malheur River.
“We were working with them on tribal land to repair some fencing so that they could keep livestock off of a place where they’re doing some stream restoration,” he explains. Tanski also does stream assessments for beaver activity in conjunction with the Malheur National Forest south of John Day and has led projects in the Ochoco National Forest.
In addition to his volunteerism, Tanski has been a voice for change. He wrote letters in support of two pieces of legislation protecting beavers. In 2023, Oregon House Bill 3464 removed beavers, which are herbivores, from a list of predators. The bill’s text states that the beaver is a keystone species serving as nature’s engineer, playing a significant role in increasing the quantity and quality of water on a landscape, thereby decreasing the risks of wildfire and acting as a buffer against climate extremes. Oregon House Bill 3932 in 2025 prohibits a person from trapping beavers on water or watersheds that are considered to have poor water quality, often caused by warm temperatures, too much sediment or low oxygen.
Tanski says reviving the beaver population is on his list of the three most important environmental contributions he can make, along with being mindful of personal consumption and supporting politicians who, as he sees it, will do the right thing.
“For me personally, it’s of the utmost importance for near-term and long-term resilience and the resilience of populations, not just of humans but of everything we share the earth with,” Tanski explains.
When the call went out to the local environmental community for Green Hero nominations, Dr. Maureen Thompson, program manager for Beaver Works, wrote, “Kevin shows up in the field, building beaver-dam analogs, restoring riparian habitat, mentoring new volunteers and cultivating a welcoming, effective volunteer culture by starting campfires, bringing home-grown food to share, playing guitar by said campfire, and inviting people to learn about the birds and stars… Kevin moves through the world with ‘beaver goggles,’ constantly identifying restoration opportunities.”
Tanski himself is more modest about his accomplishments.
“One of my favorite sayings is ‘communities are made great by those who plant trees in whose shade they know they will never sit.’ So planting that seed tree…might be something I never personally experience the benefits of, but I can leave knowing that maybe I’ve contributed to something that helped the future.”
This article appears in the Source April 16, 2026.
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