Biologists speculate the animals were looking for a new home after their old one was destroyed by heavy rain. MILL CREEK — It was a gruesome scene that awaited morning rush-hour commuters. Seven beavers were struck and killed by cars Tuesday on a busy Mill Creek thoroughfare.
Mill Creek Washington had a beaver tragedy on Tuesday. 7 beavers were struck by passing vehicles along the 132nd street. Seven. By the time rush hour came around cars were already weaving among the bodies.This horrible story would hardly be worth a post, but it was brought to my attention by a fairly compassionate article and I guess maybe these beavers deserve a eulogy. Not to mention a ‘Caution: Wildlife Crossing” sign in their memory.
Each beaver was run over in a roughly 50-yard stretch near the intersection of 132nd St. SE and 35th Ave. SE.
“I was wondering, ‘What in the world happened?'” said Matt Posivio, who spotted the dead beavers while driving to work. “To see so many of them. My first thought was, ‘I hope this isn’t foul play.’ “The sheer size of the beavers, which average around 40 pounds as adults, made it look like a road strewn with dogs, he said.
Foul Play indeed. Drivers on a deadline with their attention divided between their cellphones, lattes and traffic reports. Very foul. I can’t imagine seven family members moving in a cluster. Maybe the lodge was getting more and more flooded, and they were cramping together for dry space, and a yearling went first to look for other digs. Then a brother followed. Then the parents, then the kits. A horrible ‘ten-little indians’ massacre unfolds in my mind, but I’ll spare you the details. As violently as I hated the drivers of those vehicles when I read this article, it is true that it was dark, beavers are dark, and are very low to the ground. Also reader comments from the article make even the guiltless drivers sound pretty traumatized by the sea of tails on the road, which in a oddly comforting.
It is clear from reading the article and reviewing the lovely graphics that were created for it that the incident caused quite a stir in Mill Creek. As it should be. It’s a horrible story and no one should drive through that intersection in quite the same way anymore. I’m thinking that residents and commuters might pitch in for a “Caution sign” in their memory. I’ll personally throw in the first 20 bucks.
In the meantime, let’s hope that the sight of seven accidentally killed beavers will prevent the next seventeen beavers that Mill Creek decides to kill on purpose. Let’s hope it raises awareness of beavers in general, reminds people that they exist in family units, and generates more patience on the roads for wildlife. Let’s hope the community remembers the morning of the magnificent seven.
Joe Cannon of the Lands Council sent me a note about this lovely article yesterday, so I would highly recommend sitting somewhere cozy and enjoying it.
Beaver Fever – How Spokane’s Lands Council is Deploying Nature’s Dam Builder to Help Save Water
by Paul K. Haeder
It’s pretty compelling to hear that a Spokane-generated and managed program is catching the notice of scientists and state agency environmental wonks. That is what is happening with a local relocation program called the Beaver Project. This is a story about nature re-invigorating the land that humanity has so deftly razed, dredged, paved over and cemented in.
“I hope people agree to look to nature for low cost and low impact solutions to manage our environment,” says Amanda Parrish, one of the Beaver Project’s aficionados and leaders. She’s had a direct hand in putting those sentiments directly to work in remote forests and soggy riparian areas in our neck of the woods.
How’s that for an overture! The article is delightful to read and, what’s more, says that beavers live for 7 years instead of 50 which is always appreciated. Never mind that it also says females are larger than males (?) — its mostly accurate and well worth your time.
With 90 percent of the animal’s number reduced, so were the dams they constructed. This near extirpation caused the first major shift in the country’s water cycle. Let’s follow the numbers—if each of those pre-Columbian beavers had built a measly acre of wetlands, then an area of more than 300,000 square miles—a tenth of total land area of the country—was once beaver-built wetland from sea to shining sea.
Now that’s a stand alone paragraph. Let’s just savor it for a moment. I wish it was included on every water bill mailed in the United States. Ten percent of the beavers we once had, and USDA still killed 28000 beavers in 2009.
The 24-year-old Parrish, who grew up in San Diego, ended up in Spokane two years ago, with a degree in environmental sciences from University of San Francisco, to try her hand as an AmeriCorps volunteer attached to the Land’s Council, the well-established Spokane-based environmental group dubbed TLC for short.
Now she’s leading the effort of live-trapping beaver families, tending to them temporarily in her South Hill yard where she fusses over mothers, fathers and their young with water and fresh cut alder and aspen branches while waiting to get an entire family unit reunited to then be “relocated” to a stream on land at four relocation sites outside of Republic, Chewelah, Newport and Valley.
Honestly, don’t you wanna go to Amanda’s house? Twenty Four. I dimly remember 24. Maybe Worth A Dam needs to pay for Amanda and Joe to spend a fortnight with Skip Lisle and Mike Callahan so they can learn first hand about installing flow devices. Hmmm with the understanding that they would do the same for other 24 year olds in ten years. Joe just posted photos of his first attempt on Facebook the other day. He couldn’t find any 12 inch pipe so he had to make do….
The Lands Council does good work, and I’m particularly happy Joe & Amanda are part of it. I’ll finish this post by suggesting you watch this video again, which was produced a few years back. It’s an excellent piece of beaver gospel.
It was agreed that radical animal rights organizations such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the Humane Society for the United States (HSUS) just to name a few, are falsely influencing public opinion to a point were they are impacting wildlife management activities and traditional animal/human relationships that have been fostered for 100’s of years throughout North America and beyond.
Laying aside the obvious inflammatory association of PETA and HSUS as being the same kind of association, let’s just examine his sentence on its own terms. Bunny-hugers are ruining animal/human relationships that have existed for hundreds of years. I assume Herb is saying these relationships should not have changed in 100s of years? Even though the ratio of humans/animals has violently changed? Even thought every wild space we have encroached upon creates the opportunities for more conflicts? We have new problems, but according to Herb we should solve them the old way. A wild west solution to complex inner cities. It was good enough for Clint Eastwood. Why not for Massachusetts?
Just as our police across the country are on the frontlines and stand between order and chaos in our society, modern day sportsmen — hunters and trappers — are proactively maintaining order and balance between wildlife and our own ever expanding population.
This is definitely not to say we are in a “battle” with wildlife, even though some people in the trenches may disagree with that. Hunters and trappers do not participate because they want to win a war, they do so because of a complex desire to be closer to the land and benefit from its bounty.
A complex desire to be closer to the land? Really? I have to pause for a moment. My sarcasm nodes are firing on overload and the smoke from my ears is blurring the keyboard. Apparently trappers want to be close to a land where wildlife is as easy to take out as weeds are to pull from the garden. What am I saying? Sorry. As weeds are to kill in the garden with a generous dose of Round-up.
So this newest effort to kill beavers easier is a smarter one. It is from the old school of combo politics. This is a Machiavellian technique where you combine very popular legislation, like “cheaper gas prices” with more controversial measures like “Invading Saudi Arabia”. Here’s a report on the latest.
Regular readers of this blog should note that there was no mention made of the 9 already established exceptions to humane trapping standards. There is a good reason for that, since the goal is to make the problem seem unsolvable without more brutal measures. Just like the goal of slandering HSUS is to render these reports untrustworthy. Fair enough. This is war, and he has an eye on the enemy. Rumor is he has even familiarized himself with this website which makes sense, as we have been watching Massachusetts closely since the petulant New York Times article.
While our North American conservation management approach has been fostered through intensive scientific study, driven by dedication, a love for the natural world and an intense need to conserve our natural resources for the future, there is a threat to it’s foundation by animal rights organizations, hiding behind seemingly well meaning agendas that has not yet been met with a unified, formidable opponent.
Maybe humanity is too much work for Massachusetts. I’m told that Herbie the love-bug might just be successful this time. I wrote this to Representative Gobi and the committee yesterday, but you might considering sending your own words of wisdom.
Dear Representative Gobi
It is dishonest to say that the current effort to overturn Massachusetts trapping restrictions has anything to do with public safety, and transparently deceptive to combine this legislation with dam safety in general. It seems that at least once a year, representatives are persuaded that humanity is too much work in your state and current trapping regulations are insufficient to control beaver problems – even though there has never been even simple statistics to prove that appeals for traditional trapping are ever turned down. Someone should remind Massachusetts that its current trapping restrictions offer no fewer than 9 exceptions to the need for humane traps. If any one of these conditions are met traditional trapping can be used. It is high time someone in the state house reviewed them. I challenge you to identify a current or historical threat that would not have qualified for traditional trapping methods under these broad standards. I attach them for your review. and encourage to look at this situation realistically.
I’m sure you’d agree that there are enough dam lies in politics already.
Heidi Perryman, Ph.D.
President & Founder
Worth A Dam
www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress
The above provision shall not apply to the use of prohibited devices by federal and state departments of health or municipal boards of health for the purpose of protection from threats to human health and safety. A threat to human health and safety may include, but shall not be limited to:
(a) beaver or muskrat occupancy of a public water supply;
(b) beaver or muskrat-caused flooding of drinking water wells, well fields or water pumping stations;
(c) beaver or muskrat-caused flooding of sewage beds, septic systems or sewage pumping stations;
(d) beaver or muskrat-caused flooding of a public or private way, driveway, railway or airport runway or taxi-way;
(e) beaver or muskrat-caused flooding of electrical or gas generation plants or transmission or distribution structures or facilities, telephone or other communications facilities or other public utilities;
(f) beaver or muskrat-caused flooding affecting the public use of hospitals, emergency clinics, nursing homes, homes for the elderly or fire stations;
(g) beaver or muskrat-caused flooding affecting hazardous waste sites or facilities, incineration or resource recovery plants or other structures or facilities whereby flooding may result in the release or escape of hazardous or noxious materials or substances;
(h) the gnawing, chewing, entering, or damage to electrical or gas generation, transmission or distribution equipment, cables, alarm systems or facilities by any beaver or muskrat;
(i) beaver or muskrat-caused flooding or structural instability on property owned by the applicant if such animal problem poses an imminent threat of substantial property damage or income loss, which shall be limited to: (1) flooding of residential, commercial, industrial or commercial buildings or facilities; (2) flooding of or access to commercial agricultural lands which prevents normal agricultural practices from being conducted on such lands; (3) reduction in the production of an agricultural crop caused by flooding or compromised structural stability of commercial agricultural lands; (4) flooding of residential lands in which the municipal board of health, its chair or agent or the state or federal department of health has determined a threat to human health and safety exists. The department of environmental protection shall make any determination of a threat to a public water supply.
This special seal of our disapproval is reserved for the 
