Well well well. It’s nice to know that APHIS is still getting paid work. With all the bad news they’ve seen some better days in California. Apparently Minnesota isn’t phased.

Minneapolis Parks: We didn’t put out a ‘killing contract’ on beavers and coyotes

This week, Ralph Sievert, the Minneapolis Park Board’s director of forestry, is answering a lot of voicemails about beavers.

That’s because last week, the board met (distantly) and approved a new wildlife management contract with the United States Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. It’s an unwieldly name for a government organization that, among other things, helps solve “conflicts” between people and wildlife.

Some of those conflicts, the board said, could include particularly aggressive urban coyotes, or maybe beavers doing beaver stuff in the wrong place at the wrong time. Commissioners gave the example of a few specimens that had been chewing up the trees in Sumner Field Park. Neighbors had called the Park Board’s forestry division to complain about the mess.

Did you ever notice how beavers and coyotes tend to get lumped together as ‘nuisance’ animals? I sure did. I’ve always said I’m honestly not sure which is harder to defend. But no one wants to sit by a ‘coyote pond’.

According to Sievert, you legally cannot shoot animals within city limits. That’s just language the USDA keeps in its contracts in case it needs to, for example, shoot a nuisance animal out in rural Montana. So that’s not going to happen.

There are no plans yet to kill any Minneapolis animals. Apparently, beaver activity at Sumner Field has calmed down this spring. Park staff think the pond water was probably a little too shallow for the beavers to comfortably winter there.

There haven’t been any catastrophes involving coyotes yet, either, although they’re a growing presence within city limits. Those were just some “examples,” Sievert says, of the type of situation that could merit the USDA’s attention.

There is also bad news for the beavers, and that’s that this contract, on a practical level, changes very little. The parks system already arranges for the killing of beavers on a semi-regular basis.

We will kill beavers on an as-needed basis. And now we don’t have to go thru the hassle of having a public meeting about it or hiring a trapper. Isn’t that great? It sounds air tight to me.

By the way, speaking of beaver ponds, here’s an excellent look at what Minnesota just prevented itself from having any of. If you need a little peace today save time to watch this video. It’s a mesmerizing look at the very best place to be.

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