05/20/2026
In February 2007, a beaver built a lodge on the Bronx River within sight of the Bronx Zoo parking lot. It was the first beaver in New York City in over two hundred years.
The beaver appears on the official seal of New York City. It appears on the city flag. It is the official state animal of New York. The animal that built the economic foundation of colonial New Amsterdam by dying in enormous numbers for the European fur trade is stamped on every piece of official city stationery. But the actual living animal had been gone from the city's waterways since the early 1800s, trapped out, developed over, and erased from every river, creek, and shoreline within the five boroughs.
The Bronx River, where the beaver reappeared, had spent most of the twentieth century as one of the most polluted and neglected waterways in the city. By the 1970s it was choked with abandoned cars, tires, industrial waste, and the accumulated refuse of decades of indifference. Starting in the early 2000s, Congressman José Serrano secured roughly $14.5 million in federal grants for restoration. Community groups including the Bronx River Alliance pulled cars out of the water, removed debris, replanted banks, and spent years converting a dumping ground back into something that could function as a river.
Nobody expected a beaver to show up and verify their work.
WCS biologists at the Bronx Zoo filmed the animal swimming the river in February 2007. Patrick Thomas, the zoo's mammals curator, identified it as a male, several feet long, probably two or three years old. A dispersing juvenile that had left its natal colony somewhere upstate and followed the waterway south until it reached the Bronx. They named him José, after the congressman whose funding had made the river livable again.
José built a lodge on the zoo grounds, then moved upriver to the New York Botanical Garden during the summer of 2007. He vanished for over a year. In December 2008, he reappeared at the zoo, cut down a tree along the riverbank, and started building a new lodge. The Bronx Zoo director said José had come home for the holidays.
In 2010, a second beaver appeared on the river. The naming was put to an online public vote. The overwhelming winner was Justin, after Justin Bieber. José and Justin lived together on the stretch of river running through Bronx Park for several years. In 2017, a third beaver named Sherman was spotted at Swindler Cove in Inwood, at the northern tip of Manhattan. The animal was seen by a local birdwatcher, briefly built a home on the shoreline of Sherman Creek, and then moved on.
Both José and Justin are believed to have died by approximately 2018. No beavers were confirmed on the Bronx River after that. Camera traps set up through the fall of 2024 along the river near the zoo found no evidence of beaver activity.
Then, in late May 2025, a beaver was spotted in the Bronx River. The Bronx River Alliance confirmed the sighting. The first beaver on the river since José disappeared. Another dispersing animal, following water south into the city, finding a restored river, and deciding to stay.
The beaver does not know about the city seal or the colonial fur trade or the fourteen million dollars in federal restoration grants. It knows there are trees on the bank and enough water to build in and the river is clean enough to support the food base it needs. Every beaver that shows up on the Bronx River is running the same biological inspection that José ran in 2007. The river either passes or it does not. Three times now, it has passed.
Source: Wildlife Conservation Society / Bronx River Alliance / New York Times / NBC News / Untapped New York.
