A few summers ago, we told you about an adorable baby beaver who was orphaned and found in the Manitoba bush.

Discovered on a trail with his umbilical cord still attached, the beaver was nursed with a bottle by his founders before being brought to the Prairie Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre near Winnipeg.

But the centre was considered temporary. They were waiting to raise enough money to send him to the Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary in Muskoka, Ontario where there were other beavers for him to interact with.

“It’s important at this stage that they socialize with others their own age,” Howard Smith of Aspen Valley told CTV.

The beaver recently made the more than 2,000 kilometre trip to his new home in Ontario.

In the spring, the beaver, named “Prez” after President Air Charter, the company that flew the orphaned kit from Winnipeg to Toronto, was introduced to an on-site pond at the sanctuary, and volunteers from the Prairie Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre eventually returned him to Manitoba to be released where he was found.

The area where Prez was freed was “an ecological protected area, so that way there’s not hunting or trapping allowed on the property,” said Lisa Tretiak, president of Prairie Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre in Manitoba. “We walked him close to the water and he actually just swam out and started hiding in the cattails.”

Learn more about the PWRC’s work at pwildlife.ca.