There is nothing, and I mean NOTHING, that city officials like MORE than appearing to fix one environmental problem by wiping out another entirely. It’s like making bees fight in a jar: Either way it ends you still win. Plus it has the added benefit of making it sound like you actually give a crap about any living thing in your borders besides the ones with dollar bills.
Remember the official in Roseville who said he had to kill beavers because they threatened “vernal pools?” Or the power grid worker in Owens Valley who said beavers had to be killed because they destroyed “Nesting habitat for herons?”
Burocratic jiu jitsu. It’s like getting one half of the hydra to bite off its other head all by itself.
Plan to ‘trap and kill’ beavers divides local beach town
A move to protect turtles in a Lake Huron community has led to a backlash against a flood-control plan some say needlessly condemns area beavers.
Port Franks residents say a metal grate system installed to keep beavers out of a culvert on Outer Drive Road at L Lake was removed in recent years to let turtles pass.
But with the cage gone and beavers back in action – plugging the culvert – a proposal to “trap and kill” the rodents is the wrong way to go, said Janice Cuckovic, who lives on the lake.
“I understand that the turtles are important,” she said. “I just don’t understand why the beaver is expendable . . . I think what it boils down to is dollars and cents because it’s just easier to kill the beaver than to think of another solution.”
Did you follow that? The beaver deceiver had to be removed to let the turtles pass. And since it was removed the beavers are plugging the culvert and therefore must be killed. See how perfectly that works out? You don’t sound like such a meanie if you’re just trying to save turtles.
“My biggest issue is, it doesn’t feel like we’ve looked at options other than killing the beaver,“ she said. “If we kill the dam, we get another beaver and then the next beaver is killed, too.”
Yup. That’s the idea. Kill the next beaver by saying it’s blocking habitat for frogs. And then next one by saying it’s drowning baby deer. What ever it takes to wipe out one nuisance with another. Never mind that both Mike Callahan and Skip Lisle regularly install culvert protection with a wildlife passage and that’s it’s easy to do if you have any problem solving skills at all.
That’s not the point. The point is using turtles to get rid of beavers.
