Sherri Tippie leads a beaver-trapping mission (VIDEO)

This week's cover story, "Leave It to Beaver," explores the work of Sherri Tippie, who's spent more than 25 years rescuing beaver from trash-choked urban streams and drainage areas and relocating them to high-country habitat, or installing flow devices in dams so that beaver can thrive in the inner city...

By Alan Prendergast

September 14, 2011

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This week's cover story, "Leave It to Beaver," explores the work of Sherri Tippie, who's spent more than 25 years rescuing beaver from trash-choked urban streams and drainage areas and relocating them to high-country habitat, or installing flow devices in dams so that beaver can thrive in the inner city. She's one of the best in the country at what she does -- and we have the video to show how she does it.

The clip below comes from a recent excursion by Tippie and Matthew Niffen, a volunteer with Tippie's Wildlife 2000 grassroots organization (find them on Facebook here), into the turbid waters of West Toll Gate Creek in Aurora. The mission: to trap and relocate a beaver colony. The traps shown here were left overnight; in the morning, they contained three beaver.

The rest of this particular family had already been caught by Tippie -- they make an appearance at the end of the video, when she returns home with some willow branches from the creekside to feed them. A few days later, the entire clan was on its way to a ranch southwest of Denver, in an area known (fittingly enough) as East Beaver Creek Valley.

But we'll let Tippie explain the process herself. Here's the video:

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Alan Prendergast is a former staff writer at Westword and is now a senior contributor. He writes about various topics but primarily focuses on news. He’s contributed to Rolling Stone, Los Angeles Times, Outside, USA Today, Men's Journal and other publications and is the author of two nonfiction books, Gangbuster: One Man's Battle Against Crime and The Poison Tree: A True Story of Family Violence and Revenge. He’s earned numerous accolades for his work including the Eugene Pulliam National Journalism Writing Award and two national feature writing awards from the Society of Professional Journalists.

Contact: Alan Prendergast

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