Remember the beavers in Owens Valley? The LA Department of Water and Power decided that they posed a threat to their intricate canal system and needed killing. They announced a new trapper contract for March and were looking for just the right price to do the job. This barbarism caught the attention of a local animal defender who has been in contact with us, the Sierra Club, the SPCA and the Humane Society. She got a hold of a court document that casually mentioned using helicopters to remove beaver dams and was understandably curious. Fool that I was, I assured her that it probably meant using helicopters to fly someone into the back country and pick out the dam with a clam rake. Oh no gentle readers. She received this yesterday:
To clarify, the Department’s use of helicopters is limited to times when wets conditions do not permit vehicle and equipment access or the when use of equipment might result in undesired riparian damage. Typically a helicopter mounted with a cable and grab hook removes the dams and on occasion crews are flown in to remove the dams by hand. However, the Department does not attempt actual beaver control via helicopters.
Turn off those extra lights and dripping faucets Los Angeles! You ratepayers are covering tens of thousands of dollars for LADWP to hover over water surfaces in the hills, backing up and forth until the dams been hooked and then a few more sweeps to break up the debris. Then the whole process again a little downstream. Then the entire thing again next week when the beavers rebuild. That means the fuel, the pilot salary, and payment for the ‘hooker'(s)’.
The letter goes on to describe how beaver must be killed because they aren’t native to Owens Valley and are destroying the riparian habitat and making mosquitoes. Where to begin? Our historian friend points me to these references:
Beaver were re-introduced to the Owens Valley by the California Department of Fish and Game in 1948 in Baker Creek,[31] and have since spread throughout the Owens Valley.[32] Although it is controversial whether beaver were once native to the Owens Valley, there is growing evidence that they were native to the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada. In particular, the northern Paiute of Walker Lake, Honey Lake and Pyramid Lake have a word for beaver su-i’-tu-ti-kut’-teh.[33] When Stephen Powers visited the northern Paiute to collect Indian materials for the Smithsonian Institution in preparation for the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, he reported that the northern Paiute wrapped their hair in strips of beaver fur, made medicine from parts of beaver and that their creation legend included beaver. In addition, fur trapper Stephen Hall Meek “set his traps on the Truckee River in 1833”, which strongly suggests that he saw beaver or beaver sign.[34] Supporting this line of evidence, Tappe records in 1941 an eyewitness who said beaver were plentiful on the upper part of the Carson River and its tributaries in Alpine County until 1892 when they fell victim to heavy trapping.[35]
The letter doesn’t miss a single piece of BBM (blatant beaver misrepresentation), stopping to mention that beavers kill fish by raising water temperatures and lowering dissolved oxygen levels. All of which was painstakingly proven to be false by Dr. Pollock’s research on the effect of dams on groundwater temperatures. Never mind, it seems true to many, and that’s better than actual facts when it comes to making excuses for killing beavers.
LADWP has no prejudice towards beaver eradication, however, since the historical Owens Valley has no beaver population, inclusion of this species must be managed. This is why the state’s wildlife agency, CDFG, provides ultimate determinations on necessary beaver control and acceptable methods for our contractors to abide by. As a follow-up to my note last Friday, I was told today that we expect the trapping spec to be advertised again within a month.
And so it goes. LADWP has NO PREJUDICE towards those godless fish-killing, mosquito-bringing, tree-destroying, non-native beavers. They are just MANAGING them. They deserve a host of letters but allow me to say in closing, Northern California didn’t send Southern California all that water for you to kill beavers in.
