Month: September 2011

Let’s say (and why not?) that you were a strapping young lad on the East Coast with a comfortable government job counting the problems wildlife cause and instructing people to kill beavers, coyotes and starlings, (to name a few). You go to meetings, do some field work, carry a firearm, make eyes at the more attractive interns and go out after work for a cold one with your friends. Considering you stopped college after the bachelor’s you make pretty decent money. You can’t complain. Life is good.

You stop working for US FWS in 2008, I’m assuming because the economy tanks and suddenly Uncle Sam isn’t such a reliable employer anymore. I’m guessing you were laid off and  the promised  pension you were counting on starts to dissolve like cotton candy. You’re on your own, without work or potential work,  and a critical voice might say your skill set could barely fill up a cocktail napkin. What do you do?

Now this is all speculation here, but I’m guessing you do what you always did. You kill beavers, of course! Only for some strange reason business in Massachusetts isn’t what it once was. Seems folks aren’t hiring you to kill beavers the way you expected them too. Even though your watershed experience at FWS connected you with all the right folk. It can’t be your fault. It can’t be that they’re hiring someone else to do that work.

IT MUST BE THE ANIMAL-LOVERS!!!!!!!!

See, back when you were graduating your state passed a law that said basically that an animal’s right to die without pain and torture was more important than a trappers right not to be slightly inconvenienced. Bummer. Trapping was of course still allowed – just not with the old tools unless there was some kind of imagined threat involved to human welfare, or roads, or water supplies, (well –  it was mostly still allowed but not as allowed as it used to be). As a former employee for US FWS you knew that meant only one thing, crazy breeding wildlife with beavers everywhere and no work for you.

You’re 42, a bright lad, and not one to give up easily. You start a club to lobby politicians to go back to the old ways! You have paid close attention to the Bush administration’s talent for “opposite naming” (Clean water act, for example). It was good enough for the president so you employ the same technique for your club and choose a name that implies stewardship and animal husbandry, toying briefly with the intention of becoming a licensed non-profit.

Committee for Responsible Wildlife Management

(Note – you could have used Responsible Animal Management instead of Wildlife, but then your acronym would have been CRAM and that’s problematic – you’re no fool.)

So CRWM pleads and pushes and lobbies and wheedles and deals and nudges the trapping issue into the legislative chamber. And those crazy animal lovers at MSPCA keep pushing back with their videos and letter whining. You take your skill for turning a phrase on its head and write a few articles on maintaining animal welfare through careful trapping,  highway workers and city employees (who long for nothing more than to appear to care about wildlife  while still killing it when it gets in their way) eat it up. You’re a hero. Politicians flock to you. You are at the state house more often than Tip O’Neil.

You come “this close” to overturning the law each time, but you never give up. Now you’re at it again with HB2001 which basically inserts text into the old bill saying that no one can use those bad traps except you and your friends and everyone who asks.

The above provision shall not apply to the use of prohibited devices by federal and state departments of health, wildlife management agencies, or divisions or municipal boards of health for the purpose of protection from threats to human health and safety or for the management of furbearing wildlife during their established regulated seasons. The uses of prohibited devices are subject to the regulations and restrictions promulgated by the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife.

This time you may have found the right girl for the job – (I’ve been told women are always easier to convince that their poodles are in danger if strong trappers don’t get the bad coyotes). Representative Anne Gobi is a democrat and the chair  of the joint committee on natural resources and agriculture. This comes to the floor soon, and you can bet you’ll be there, making faces at the Bunny-Huggers,  shaking heads and scaring babies.

This is certain to happen, its practically a done deal  – unless – unless – unless – one of those crazy animal people get in your way. Unless someone gets the ear of Anne before you do and lets the BIG OL’ SECRET cat outta the bag. As long as no one  passes it along, you’re home free. What a are the odds? The white-hats keep marching to the capital but they never say anything but “be nice” and “animals are people too”.

They never say that it’s a lie.

A Big Lie.

They never say that the only reason you’re there in the first place is because you want a job.

They never say that a simple meta-analysis comparing news articles about beavers in MA to four other states of similar size and water acreage without trapping bans would prove that there are no more beavers or beaver complaints than there have ever been since 1996. No more than there are in states where they kill them however they like, anyway, considering normal population growth. The truth is that the change in law didn’t mean that folks stopped killing beavers.

It just mean that they stopped paying trappers to do it.

Like the landscaper whose leaf blower runs out of gas, the brick layer who drops his trowl, or the widow who relies on her trusty vibrator: they simply take matters into their own hands.

It’s a good thing no one is going to tell Anne  before this  bill comes to the floor. Soon it will pass and the whole “be nice to beavers” BS will be over.  Then you can go back to paid work, instead of begging for crumbs on the internet. Heck maybe you can even prevent laws like this from getting any traction in other areas. Then you can work all over the East Coast!

And if it doesn’t pan out, don’t worry. You can always move to California.  They let you kill beavers any old way out here.