Beaver rescued, released into new home after being found in Phoenix canal

PHOENIX (FOX 10) - He may have been a little lost, but after Southwest Wildlife received several calls from the public, this beaver has been found.

"When we first got the phone call, I thought people misidentified something," said Lesly Swanson of SRP. "The public was a great help. They kept reporting the beaver's location and they would call it into our call center. They called it into our environmental group. They posted it on Nextdoor apps, so we had a really good idea of where he was hanging out. Sure enough, it was a beaver in the middle of our canal in downtown Phoenix!"

As beavers do, they make themselves right at home, building up a dam, which would have caused trouble for SRP since they use their dams to generate power.

"We were worried about that, but luckily we had enough water coming through our system, that I think the flows were so high, he wasn't really able to build a dam," Swanson said. "He was taking out trees in a nearby area though."

SRP turned the rescue over to the experts at Southwest Wildlife Center. After they examined and determined he was healthy, they released the beaver into a new home, the upper Verde River outside of Chino Valley.