I received this email last night from Leonard Houston of the South Umpqua Rural Community Partnership in Oregon. You might remember that these are the good people who sponsored the “State of the beaver conference” last February. He had some very interesting backstage insights into what happened in Newberg. I thought I’d pass them along to you.
Here is what is really happening, a fellow beaver advocate who is also a ODFW (Oregon Department Fish & Wildlife) biologist informs me that the Newberg beavers have moved upstream and on to property where they are welcome and are currently posing no threat to the culvert so they will be left alone, there will be no lethal management used as the State has adapted a policy allowing translocation of problematic beavers for restoration purposes and founding new colonies in historical habitat.
We are currently working with the ODFW Beaver Workgroup to enact a landowner incentive program to compensate damages or loss of crops to promote beavers being allowed to stay where they are, as we both know the benefits out weigh the liabilities.
The involvement of people such as yourself is the key to educating the public on the importance of the role beavers play in our aquatic ecosystems. Thank You for taking the time to help with beavers everywhere. We have offered our services to the City of Newberg and the local ODFW who was contacted to find a solution. They will be keeping us updated if things change for the worse.
Sincerely
Leonard and Lois
Now isn’t that interesting! Nothing to worry about and a friend at ODFW! A landowner incentive program! Beavers relocating when kits are born! I suggested to Len that I might connect him with the journalist who wrote the nice article in the Graphic, but he declined. He prefers to do his behind the scenes work and leave the visible drama up to crazy beaver defenders like us.
The whole thing reminded me a bit of Michael Frayn‘s romping success “noises off“. Act one shows a very familiar, somewhat tedious farce being produced in the usual way with the usual vanities. Act 2 turned the whole set around and put the audience backstage and privy to the intrigues and foibles that drove and chased the actors. For Act 3 you were back facing the front, but still knowing all the drama of the back, understanding now how the play should go, and sensitive to all the reasons why it might not. Very smart comedy. I can’t find a clip of the cast I saw in London lo those many years and four presidents ago, but this is a nice production and gives you the general idea.
Will there be an Act 3 to the story of the Newberg Beavers? We’ll just have to wait and see.
Oil this morning in the Keys, because contrary to popular belief, the gulf of Mexico isn’t a bathtub and the contents actually go other places too. Now the oil is in the Loop Current and is getting pulled down the coast. Maybe people will take it seriously when it comes around the Atlantic.
