A 1962 California Department of Fish and Wildlife report indicates that golden beaver ("Castor canadensis subauratus") lived in Coyote Creek historically. This report is consistent with Alexander McLeod's report on the progress of the first Hudson's Bay Company fur brigade sent to California in 1829, "Beaver is become an article of traffic on the Coast as at the Mission of St. Joseph alone upwards of Fifteen hundred Beaver Skins were collected from the natives at a trifling value and sold to Ships at 3 Dollars". Physical proof of golden beaver in south San Francisco Bay tributaries is a "Castor canadensis subauratus" skull in the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History collected by zoologist James Graham Cooper in Santa Clara, California on Dec. 31, 1855. Beaver recolonized Coyote Creek in 2018 (see photo of beaver dam), apparently using the Bay to move from the Guadalupe River watershed.