Check out this article from St. Catharine’s Ontario. Apparently beavers are doing the pesky tree-thing and our neighbors in the frozen North have decided killing is the best option. They’ve hired ex-cop turned beaver trapper Stewart Frerotte to do the work, and he is using what he describes as merciful conibear traps to take them out.
“If you had told me seven years ago I’d be trapping beavers in St. Catharines, I would have laughed at you,” Frerotte said, “but all of a sudden, they’ve just blossomed. There’s beavers everywhere, it seems.”
Frerotte was hired by the St. Catharines parks and recreation department last spring after the damage was discovered in Rennie Park and there were reports of a large male beaver living in the area of Henley Island that was charging people.
Charging people? Like for admission?
Since then he’s killed three of the rascals, but he’s “only going to take the ones doing the damage”. The whole article reads like a bad crime novel. Will he be picking the guilty parties out of a lineup? Looking for telltale signs of pear leaves on their breath?
The article was worth a letter, so I dispatched this post haste:
Your January 14th article on the hunt for animal predators offered readers a brave new anti-hero. Even after retirement from the force, Stewart Frerotte is willing to do the city’s dirty work, and offers this head-scratching mantra:
“Beavers and humans could co-exist, Frerotte said, “except they do all this damage.”
I can only assume the damage-causing “they” of his sentence refers to beavers, and not humans. Still, I am hard pressed to understand his implication that cities in Ontario, the United States and beyond are able to wrap trees to prevent beaver harvest, but the pear farmers of Ontario cannot.
Any city that’s smarter than a beaver can keep a beaver, should be his refrain, but that doesn’t come with a price tag.
Conibear traps are wonderful, humane inventions, provided that the participating beaver is cooperative enough to stick his head through the hole. Those of a less obliging nature simply drown slowly underwater. More importantly though, a sudden decrease in beaver population triggers a population boom, meaning Mr. Frerotte will face an even better work load next season.
If St. Catherine’s is willing to truly tackle this problem, they should look to learning how to live with beavers. They are a keystone species, an ecosystem engineer that will pay for their keep by providing better wildlife, better fish and increased songbirds.
If St. Catherine’s isn’t ready to move into the humane century, it should seriously consider how Mr. Frerotte’s portrait will look on the back of nickle.
Heidi Perryman, Ph.D.
President & Founder
Worth A Dam
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