Death of young beaver in Port Moody draws call for investigation

The drowning of a young beaver in a Port Moody sewer last weekend is drawing calls for an investigation by a local wildlife group.

The Fur-Bearers, a Vancouver-based fur-bearing animal protection non-profit, is calling what happened “appalling” and said in a statement they want the city to “investigate its beaver management plan and decision-making processes” as a result of the beaver’s death.

According to the city, staff had been working to remove the beavers from a storm-sewer pipe for more than two weeks using several methods, “including a temporary wire mesh screen with a one-way door, using beaver scent as an attractant and breaching the beavers’ dam.”

During that time, the city says they were able to get all of the beavers out of the pipe. The plan was to install a permanent screen over the entrance to the storm drain.

The beavers were left to “rehabilitate” in Pigeon Creek — the stream is mostly culverted but does have more natural, exposed sections in the Klahanie area, which isn’t far from Burrard Inlet — but one of the young beavers, also known as a kit, kept finding a way back into the pipe.

Last Friday, after efforts by city workers to draw the kit out of the pipe were unsuccessful, a “consultant” placed a trap inside the pipe. The city wanted to make sure the beavers remained outside the pipe while the permanent screen was installed.

Workers also installed a bypass pipe through the existing beaver dam, so water would continue to flow and keep the water level in the creek and the pipe low overnight.

The plan was to check the trap Saturday morning. If the beaver wasn’t there, then they assumed it had escaped the pipe altogether. If it was in the trap, it would be released into the stream to rejoin its family once the permanent screen was installed.

But when city staff arrived in the morning, they found the beavers had plugged the bypass pipe, which led to raised water levels in the creek and in the pipe.

“Despite all of our efforts to exclude the last beaver from the pipe safely — which was the desired outcome of everyone involved — unfortunately, the kit was found dead inside the trap, due to the unexpected increase in the water level,” said Jeff Moi, general manager of engineering and operations. “We are deeply saddened by this outcome. It is the opposite of what we had all hoped for.” 

The other beavers were observed in the creek. The city said they will continue to monitor the beavers.

The Fur-Bearers said some Port Moody residents had asked for them to work with city officials on how best to deal with the beavers living in Pigeon Creek, as they have “extensive experience and success working with municipalities to mitigate and prevent infrastructure concerns stemming from beaver activity.”

According to the group, the city consulted with them in February 2017 about tree protection, but declined their help when it came to the beavers in Pigeon Creek.

“There is absolutely no reason that any of these beavers had to die what I can only imagine was a terrifying death to protect this culvert,” the Fur-Bearers’ Adrian Nelson said in a statement. “We have worked with communities all over British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario, and trained with North America’s leaders and innovators in non-lethal beaver management. It is appalling to me that the City of Port Moody allowed for this to happen.”

According to Nelson, the beavers were “beloved” by the local community. Their presence had “brought the community together, with residents lining up to watch them work on their dens and kits learn to swim.”

So the city turned down the help of Fur bearer Defeders and hired their own ‘consultants’ who usually get paid to kill beavers anyway. They tried putting in an (obviously unprotected) pipe in the dam. And then thought it would be a good idea to set a live trap in the culvert.

And when that little baby (who was a creature of habit and returned home to sleep for the day) he was caught in the trap and couldn’t get free, That night his family went about the job of fixing the dam and their hard work inadvertently drown him.

Judy we are so sorry a story that started so well ended so painfully. I do not think there I know of a single worse story out there. except for the sad one about that onr town who loved its beavers for a decade and one summer watched 4 adorable kits die one after another of an unknown, unstoppable cause, which the experts couldn’t explain, and then lost its yearling, and the rest of then the  beavers moved away,

Deep with the first dead lies London’s daughter,
Robed in the long friends, The grains beyond age,
The dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.

Dylan Thomas

Dearest Judy, who courage and grace protected these beavers through so much, and shared your delight with your neighbors to help them understand, Martinez doesn’t have an answer for this senseless death, or anything to offer that will make the pain go away. Martinez doesn’t know why this happened.

But we have learned one thing.  Just one thing. An important but incomplete thing: This isn’t the end.

Beaver stories don’t have endings. They have chapters.