I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist.

I was noticing that we had talked about so many good beaver articles lately and fantasizing that we could maybe have only good news through all of January. Like picking your way across a pond by stepping only on firm dry stones so that you never get wet.

But then I saw this and I just couldn’t resist.

Wildlife management in the Beaver State

I think about my grandfathers quite a bit these days. It’s because I am the same age they were in my earliest memories. Both of them lived in what used to be called Oregon Territory. Both of them lived in and worked in the woods.

My grandpa on the Lewis side of the family had 100 acres of good river bottom and timber and much of it he kept like a park.

Beavers too were safe on his place. It was funny because he was a logger for part of his life and the beaver was sometimes competition. But there was a day Grandpa said he was calling in a trapper. The beavers, he said, were destroying the salmon and steelhead spawning areas along the creek, and he could not allow that. I didn’t think about any of that until recently.

Oh my goodness. Not only do we get to read the pained article of a trapper complaining about beaver policy but we get to read about the concerns of a pained GRANDFATHER to the trapper. Who was also wrong, by the way. Now you see why I couldn’t resist.

Gary was born in 1967. So that means his father was probably born just after the war, and his grandfather was born somewhere after the first pandemic. So he would have acquired this land after the beaver population had been decimated for around 50 years. Surely he had no idea what it was supposed to look like. Or how his land might have functioned normally if it didn’t have a beaver-sized hole in it.

Today there is no shortage of beavers in what used to be called Oregon Territory. There are not too many and there are not too few, because our Department of Fish and Wildlife use the science-based North American model of game management. Hunters, fishermen and trappers are licensed and their fees pay the salaries of our wildlife managers. It is a system that has been working on behalf of fish and wildlife for more than a century in the state of Oregon, keeping fish, fur and game animals in balance. Why is beaver management important?

Like my grandpa realized he had to do, beavers should be trapped to ensure that spawning habitat is not blocked. Trapping efforts in Oregon have helped to keep waterways open for spawning cutthroat trout, chinook salmon and steelhead. Yet beaver are also important to fish. Beaver dams protect juvenile coho and cutthroats with deeper water, and dams also stabilize stream flows.

We keep the beaver in balance to protect urban areas and wild places, too. Beaver dams can block drainage channels that prevent water from draining out of farmland. Water into farmland is also important and that’s why beaver management has been protected to preserve irrigation rights. Girdling of trees causes other types of habitat damage. Flooding caused by beaver dams can also kill stands of trees and destroy the habitat of other animals.

Don’t you just hate it when beavers move in and start DESTROYING THE HABITAT of other animals. Gosh I hate that.  I mean one beaver moves in and the whole ecosystem just falls apart.

You know. Like the way a keystone knocks down an entire arch way.

Oregon Territory was formed because of the importance of beaver harvest. That symbol on the flag was put there in celebration of people working together.

Trappers are a small minority in the hunting and fishing community, yet they provide an important function in wildlife management. It would be easy to legislate them out of existence, but if we allow that to happen, we lose an important tool in wildlife management and we allow politics to win over science-based management.

Science based beaver management? What is the science exactly involved? I think Gary is playing a pure numbers game here. See the beaver population is growing not shrinking. So that proves trapping isn’t bad. And in fact it’s necessary because otherwise they would take over the whole state. Never mind that the population is still a tenth of what it was. Or that science might recommend saving beavers to save water, or save salmon, fight fires, stabelize streams or reduce nitrogen in the soil.

Gary’s position can be summed up fairly simply. Beavers: there are enough of them. Get over it. Shhh. This my favorite part.

It’s fashionable right now to advise the ODFW Commission on how to do their job, but I would like to point out that wildlife management works and has been working for 150 years. The science-based North American model of wildlife management works on behalf of all wildlife and for the people of Oregon. It’s why we call this the Beaver State. It’s why the beaver is on the flag.

Gary believes that wildlife management has been working since 1830. Since the days when Hudson Bay Company moved in and made it their policy to create a “fur desert” to discouragepeople from moving in – the ecologial equivalent of licking all your desert so that your cousins won’t try to steal it.

In 1830 the beaver, otter, fisher, mink, muskrat, entire population was wiped OUT. Destroyed. Kaput. Gary did you really mean to say that ODFW current beaver policy is working exactly as well as when all the fur bearing animals near any stream were decimated? You did say 150 years. And that was 150 years ago. I’m sure you’re understanding of history is as good as your understanding of ecology.

Well, sure. If that’s your point. I have to agree with you. Their current policy is exactly that good.