Yesterday I came across a very important resource that had been quietly available online since November. I’m going to spend the weekend reading through all the really important bits again, but I thought I’d let you know about it too, in care you want to do the same. You will remember that there was a huge change to the law in Oregon about beaver trapping on federally managed public lands and a herculean effort by Suzanne Fouty and others to prevent it. This was prepared for the lawmakers who failed to learn.
- This document was originally created for a “Petition to Initiate Rule making to Amend OAR635-050-0070to Permanently Close Commercial and Recreational Beaver Trapping and Hunting on Federally-Managed Public Lands and the Waters that Flows Through These Lands” which was brought before the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commissionon September 24,2020. On November 13,2020, the Commission denied the Petitioners request to initiate rule making despite economic and ecological benefits.
Now I would think it’s amazing that lawmakers would protect the right to kill resources but what indeed do I know. In Tennessee they just made it illegal to promote vaccinations in schools so obviously I don’t understand how these things work. The trapping lobby and the polio lobby must be very strong indeed.
The document was prepared for lawmakers so its VERY VERY EASY to read through with a labeled table of contents and an executive summary. Today we’ll just work through the summary but it’s all TOP notch and I’m sure will be useful in many settings across the country.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Beaver, through their dam-building activity, help retain water on the landscape in beaver ponds and on floodplains, leading to reduced flood risk for landowners immediately downstream, improved water quality and stream flows, and an expansion of fish and wildlife habitat. Public utilities which manage reservoirs benefit as improved floodplain connectivity and channel complexity evens out peak highs and lows in streamflows. Oregonians from across the state benefit as opportunities for outdoor recreation such as wildlife viewing, fishing, and hunting expand. Ranchers and farmers benefit as water stored in beaver-created wetlands and behind beaver ponds provides valuable water during droughts. Cities and towns benefits with improved water quality and more dependable flows. And in addition to all these benefits, there is also the creation of carbon capture and store areas as wetlands and wet meadows increase in size and abundance, a response strategy to climate change that has yet to be assigned a monetary value.
Are you with me so far? Good!
There are also the large economic benefits related to salmon as it moves through its life cycle. Beaver-created and maintained habitat provide key juvenile coho salmon winter rearing habitat, decrease stream temperatures, increase channel complexity and habitat connectivity, and expand riparian habitat all along migration corridors. These improvements along migration corridors not only enhance the potential for salmon to survive and expand within a changing climate but provide the same services to migratory birds. Increases in beaver-created habitat would therefore aid ODFW and to the state in their efforts to achieve conservation goals for affected species at little to no cost. In addition, there is the chance to prevent the extinction of salmon due to lack of habitat, something that abundant beavers and their habitat can help remedy. An extinction event would be a devastating cultural and ecological loss. Assigning a price tag to such an event should only be considered a point when considering salmon’s economic, social and cultural importance and value.
Economic benefits. Now you’re talking. I think the politicians in the room just started to pay attention.
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any clearer why we need to save beavers. This helps a lot.
These beaver-generated economic and ecological benefits are currently only future potential benefits because they require landscapes where there are abundant beaver who are creating and maintaining abundant beaver habitat. These conditions that do not currently exist in Oregon because continued beaver trapping and hunting on federally managed public lands under ODFW furbearer regulations has left abundant suitable beaver habitat unoccupied and thus abundant ecological and economic benefits unrealized.
Beaver trapping and hunting prevents Oregonians from receiving these benefits for two major reasons related to 1) family dynamics and 2) dam maintenance needs. First, the beaver furbearer season under ODFW furbearer regulations occurs in the winter when the fur quality is best and thus overlaps the beaver breeding and pregnancy season. Because kits can stay with their parents up to two years, an entire colony can be trapped/hunted out in a single seaon which eliminates dispersal potential. Even if some beaver remain, there is a lag between birth, adulthood, dispersal and finding a mate which limits creation and maintenance of habitat and its benefits and future dispersal. Those that remain are vulnerable to trapping and hunting pressures the following year in addition to all the other mortality causes. Second, removal of beaver leaves dams unmaintained. As a result, when the dams fail, they are not repaired. The ponds drain, water tables drop, water quality declines, wetlands and wet meadows begin converting to drier species and fish and wildlife habitat decreases. The ecological and economic benefits begin to unravel. Therefore, maintaining family units is key for expanding populations, successful dam building and maintenance, dispersal, and habitat creation and maintenance.
Trappers want to kill them just when they want to make a family. And once the family structure is gone all those economic benefits slip away in the undammed water.
This document presents the ways that beaver-created and maintained habitat, though their influences on aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, can generate large market and non-market benefits from the water and habitat-based changes. These potential future benefits are in the 100s of millions of dollars and would occur at little to no cost to Oregonians. Table 1 compares these future beaver-driven benefits versus the existing economic benefits gained by trappers and hunters under ODFW’s furbearer regulations (Table 1). The remaining document provides information on how those numbers were arrived at and their supporting documentation.
Alright, Are you paying attention? LIsten up. Beavers make you money. Killing beavers makes a very small amount of people a very little money. But letting them live will help the salmon population which makes the entire state a lot of money. You like money right?
Well would you look at that! Such a little bit of money changes hands when you let the beavers be killed. I’m thinking this is going to be made real clear.
Well whadaya know. Now we’re playing chess. Now you’re speaking a language I finally care about. Well not that they paid attention. But still. I think I would have gone with some graphics in the report. Maybe a nice picture about how beaver benefit salmon and some colored bullet points delivered by a group of kindergardners in beaver tails so that it was all filmed on the evening news..
But what do I know?
Without beavers, streams have become eroded and incised, meaning they cut deep channels into the landscape. These channels disconnect the stream from its floodplain, disrupting the flow of water, nutrients, and, importantly for salmon, habitat. The areas around these streams shift from thriving, diverse wetlands with pools and floodplains surrounded by trees and shrubs—to dry grasslands made up of only a few species. As seen in many areas implementing beaver mimicry, including areas of salmon habitat on Bridge Creek, the implementation of beaver dams and BDAs mitigate those effects.
Getting these beaver populations to thrive in Utah’s desert landscape has been a challenging task for Emma Doden, a masters student in translocated beaver ecology at Utah State University. Doden and several other researchers set out to reintroduce beavers to the drought and fire-stricken land. Water shortages are severe here, and much of the river ecosystem is degraded. Doden’s primary goal is to restore the quantity and quality of water in eastern Utah, whose waterways sustain an array of wildlife, riverbank vegetation and endangered fish species.
“We do have farmers – and fishermen – who are very keen to see beavers coming back, who recognise they are great for fish and the livestock and irrigation,” Brazier says. “But there is a group who doesn’t want to see beavers back in the landscape, and one of the key things has been knowing where farmers are coming from, knowing what their concerns are, and engaging with them. It’s an ongoing process and we’re working with them to manage any negative impacts.
