So yesterday I spent a little time trotting around the internet(s) to see if I could raise interest in the very bad decision by Massachusetts to contract with Wildlife Services to take out beavers. I figured at the very least folks would be interested in the unfortunate  timing, since it follows Knudson’s exposé and a probable congressional inquiry into the agency. Failing that, I assumed people might be interested in all the otters and house pets WS kills by accident once they get invited to the party. More than this, I believed that if an organization wanted wildlife to thrive, they’d care about this issue.

I had good response from Massachusetts Audubon, and polite interest from reporters. Then I tracked some folks doing otter research and other wildlife work in the area. Their website looked a lot like our new River Otter Ecology Friends in Marin, so I felt an irrational affinity to them. They had the word “biodiversity” in their title – and since its what beavers do best – that seemed promising. I did a bit of googling and found out about their backgrounds and training. I wrote them about the proposal and the request for public comment. I pointed them to Knudson’s articles and suggested that hiring WS to do this work was a big deal and meant more accidentally killed otters. I even pointed out that when beaver populations fall all the species that depend on them will be impacted too.

Remember, I’m still thinking of our otter friends Megan Isadore and Paola Bouley in the back of my mind. They are coming to the beaver festival, and plan on joining us for a beaver tour before hand. I have a dazzling respect for their energy and focus. So I’m expecting good things from naturalists who lecture at Martha’s vineyard and make a living taking care of wildlife.

The director wrote me back, first saying that she didn’t have time or funding to get involved and then saying that the beaver population was such a problem that she knew cases where they were set on fire and didn’t I think it was better for them to be trapped than to be set on fire?

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Those are my options?

Five years of beaver battles have prepared me for a lot of things: negative comments from city council, irrational decisions by public works, bitter comments from wealthy property owners, politicians who lie under oath and judges who let them. I have been around the beaver block and am not surprised to discover an adversary at Fish and game, on the watershed council, or even at Audubon. But I was not prepared for this reaction from a non profit with BIODIVERSITY in the title.

I was of course incapable of not writing back. I did not rise to the bait of the  beaver-aflame but said that I was less interested in how they died than I was in the trickle down effect their death would have on all the wildlife that depends upon beaver ponds. If Massachusetts fish and wildlife has never counted the beaver population, how do they know its increased? I was curious, if she believes their is a beaver population explosion, has she seen a similar otter population explosion? Since more wetlands and more fish must mean more otters?

She wrote back that it would be unreasonably expensive to count beavers, but MAFW knows there are more because their complaints have increased. Restricting trapping laws was a bad decision that has had horrendous consequences for the state. The iconic animal, she states, has been reduced to a “nuisance rodent”. The state no longer has an idea about their numbers because the state no longer has anyone trapping them. Even though they don’t have population numbers, they can count complaint numbers, and they’ve skyrocketed. The biologists at MAFW are good people and their just sick about the problem which they know is real. She ended with besides I’m busy and we don’t have any beavers out here anyway.

The tiny scientist part of my brain would like to see a statistical analysis, lets say a simple chi squared test comparing beaver complaints in Massachusetts to beaver complaints some place about the same size and development – lets say New Hampshire, and check whether the difference is statistically significant. Or we could go back in time and compare Massachusetts to itself and see whether the complaints were growing at the same rate as the beaver reproductive rate. All it takes is a grad student.

But the realist in me just gives up. Some folks in Massachusetts believe they are surrounded by beavers, and no amount of data is going to change their minds on that. They see everything through a pair of ‘trapping-restrictions-colored glasses, and even smart wildlife advocates are affected. I got an email this week from a birdbander who said the same basic thing. If I didn’t know really smart wildlife folk in Massachusetts who know its bunk I might think it was true. But its not true. Never mind that conibear traps are outlawed in Maine, and Europe and they seem to be escaping the decline of civilization as we know it okay. Never mind that the rules still let you use the traps if public safety is allegedly at risk. Never mind that people complain JUST AS MUCH about beavers in California and we let you kill them however you like out here! Never mind that every single day, in every state with the exception of Hawaii, beavers are already considered a NUISANCE RODENT.

Otter people are not the friends of beaver people in Massachusetts. Got it. Beavers are not important to biodiversity in the Bay State. Check. To quote George Bernard Shaw (and no not H.G. Wells as the internet tries to misrepresent)

“You have learned something. That always feels at first as if you have lost something“