Parts of Ventura County’s Sespe Creek are nearly as wild today as they were in the early 1900s, when Joseph Grinnell first caught wind of the “unexpected find” there. It makes it hard not to wonder: what might still lay hidden among its rugged terrain?

If you know what to look for, you can still make unexpected finds of your own: old chewed up sticks or, via satellite, structures bearing the characteristic signature of the creatures’ engineering feats.

Where did the beaver come from, are they still here, and do they belong here? “It’s like a Sherlock Holmes mystery,” said Rick Bisaccia, Ojai Valley Land Conservancy’s former stewardship director, of the 100-year-old hunt for answers….

Read the rest in the Edible Fall 2020 Issue.