Interview with Audrey Taub, Executive Director of SLO Beaver Brigade
“If you’ve got beavers in your area, recruit them to your Drinkable Rivers project – they’re the original water stewards, after all. And if you don’t have them, ask yourself why.” That’s Audrey Taub, Executive Director of SLO Beaver Brigade. We sat down with her last week to hear how she is bridging her passions for water, wildlife, and community to establish an intersectional environmentalist Drinkable Rivers program on the banks of the Salinas River in Central California.
Audrey, what came first for you: the rivers or the beavers?
Audrey: I guess it went: rivers, then beavers… and now rivers again! I grew up in New York State, where my whole town was deeply engaged in the Hudson River Cleanup Project led by resident musician and environmentalist Pete Seeger. So I was steeped from a young age in community stewardship for our waterways.
Later, after learning wildlife tracking at the Wilderness Awareness School in Washington state, I moved to San Luis Obispo County (SLO) in California and started tracking in my free time. The soft, muddy banks of our Salinas River preserve animal tracks perfectly, and soon I found my way to a beaver pond. I was so surprised, because I thought there were no beavers in this region. Nobody believed me when I told them!
I spent more and more time at the pond and eventually founded the SLO Beaver Brigade to stand up for beavers and the incredible ecosystem and climate benefits of beaver- managed wetlands. We then began collaborating with ecohydrologist and beaver researcher Dr. Emily Fairfax which helped expand our message.
Say more. Why are beavers so essential to healthy waterways and a habitable planet?
Audrey: Firstly, families of beavers build multiple dams along a stretch of river – usually about a half mile – and these complexes slow down the water’s flow. This gives time for pollutants such as nitrogen and heavy metals to sink to the bottom, where they can be neutralized through natural processes. A colleague once told me about a beaver family living downstream of a heavily polluting factory. The industrial effluents caused the water upstream of the beavers to become extremely acidic – like lemon juice. But nine beaver dams later, the water came out cleansed with a neutral pH!
Secondly, beavers’ activities benefit the land as well as the water. They dig channels from their pond out into the riparian areas to safely travel to their food source (willows & cottonwoods), and this activity spurs new vegetation growth and further spreads out water onto the landscape, turning the whole area into a fantastic carbon sink of 30x the normal sequestration rate.
Finally, beaver-managed wetlands offer incredible climate resilience to the surrounding ecosystem. When we had a drought in the region – an increasingly urgent issue in California – the land around the beaver complex was the only place that showed zero signs of drought.
Beaver dams in the Salinas River. Photo by Audrey Taub
Fascinating. So how did you get from beavers back to rivers… namely, Drinkable Rivers?
Audrey: So much fun! The Salinas is pretty shallow, so we were wading around knee-deep in the water. We were like, “huh, the river is much clearer than we thought!” As first- timers, it took us about an hour to go through the manuals and do all the tests. It kind of felt like a game… trying to pinpoint the exact color results of the colorimetric analyses (for nitrogen, phosphate, etc.), everybody seeing it a little bit differently. I just loved how tactile the kit made the process of understanding the river better. So afterwards, we put our heads together to imagine a longer-term program around the kit that could advance and expand our organizational mission: the Drinkable Rivers Paso Robles Project 2025.
Do tell!
Audrey: The idea emerged from our many conversations as an organization about who is and who is not included in environmentalist movements and initiatives. Central California is home to a diverse demographic population – including many Spanish and Mixtec speaking migrant workers. Meanwhile, we came to the realization that our team of volunteers wasn’t reflecting that diverse community, and we asked ourselves: Why are we only appealing to one demographic? What can we do to change that? Through an experience with a highly skilled volunteer paid through California’s new College Corps scheme, we realized how much we had been missing in our work by not reaching out to historically marginalized communities, and how much we stood to learn.
An educational walk in beaver habitat. Photo by Brittany App.
An educational walk in beaver habitat. Photo by Brittany App.
So you brought your interests in drinkable rivers and inclusive environmentalism together?
Audrey: Exactly. With the Drinkable Rivers Paso Robles Project 2025, we’ve been able to get a grant to start a fully-funded summer internship for 5 young people from the Paso Robles area to work with the Drinkable Rivers kit. In partnership with local community organizations, we’ll be training the participants in water stewardship practices and citizen science methods. From June-August 2025, they’ll carry out 6 Drinkable Rivers
measurements at 2 different locations upstream and downstream of beaver dams, as well as writing up a report to present at the end of the summer. We’re still ironing out some details, but we’re very excited and hope it will be the first of many years we do it! We truly see a multi-benefit exchange here: we gather good data for the ongoing Drinkable Rivers project; we study the impact of beaver dams on river health; the students get introduced to new potential paths for study, work, or contribution to planetary health; and we learn from the valuable knowledge and lifeways they carry from their own lived experience. It’s not just better for the environment, it’s also better for all of us.
What parting advice do you have for other hubs starting out?
Audrey: Honestly? Just get in there and do it. Schedule a community conversation about your Drinkable Rivers plans. Schedule a measurement day and send out invitations. It might sound optimistic, but we keep being amazed by how many people are yearning to contribute… How many are like, “Yeah, finally! Something I can do!” Then, once you do get people in the room, remember to ask yourself who is not there and why. And what you can do to change that.
Drinkable RiversTM CC 
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