I was checking to see what new reports there might be on Red Deer Park and found a nice article about people rallying around the beavers written by Drew Halfnight in the National Post. Apparently there are now four potential property owners willing to have the beavers relocated.
Residents of Red Deer, Alta., have rallied to save about a dozen beavers that have been attacking dogs in a downtown off-leash park, killing one of them. The city’s parks department said Wednesday it would trap and kill the beavers due to the severity of the attacks — at least six dogs have been seriously injured while swimming in a pond in Three Mile Bend park — but the idea of euthanizing the animals has set off a firestorm, and the city is re-thinking its plan.
Re-thinking might be a bit of an exaggeration (twice), but we are happy that the people of Calgary and beyond have found their ‘beaver-saving groove”. It’s a good thing when it happens, and powerful: humane, civic-minded, and communal. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that saving beavers might easily be the best and most collaborative thing Martinez has ever done. A disjointed ‘uptown’ and ‘downtown, two distinct school districts with competing high schools to split the town in half. Don’t forget to include a city council that has always understood how to play one side against the other and you have a civic recipe for discord. Saving beavers was a unifying goal and remains a reason why people from Virginia Hills drive downtown and people from Castro Street think of them as neighbors.
Now its their turn: Ohhh Canada! Not only have the adjectives changed, the narrative changed. the heroes changed, but the superintendent’s name has changed too. He’s gone from “Trevor” to “Kevin”—a much more ‘man of the people’, less aristocratic name. (Well, as I’ve often said, beavers do change things. It’s what they do…)
“We have received an abnormally large number of calls and e-mails,” said Kevin Poth, superintendent of the city’s park system, who said about 75 dog advocacy groups, wildlife groups and concerned citizens had contacted him in two days.
“It really has opened up our community to have an interesting discussion about how we interact with wildlife in an urban centre,” he said. The callers fall into three categories, he said: those who want the animals killed, those who want them re-located and those who want nothing done at all. The vast majority have defended the beavers.
So as I’m enjoying this lovely article, thinking about our own November 7, 2007 dialogue, when I see this towards the end, mentioning the horrific intentions of P.E.I. to prove its ignorance 150 times.
The Red Deer beaver debate is not isolated. Last month on P.E.I., officials said they would kill about 150 nuisance beavers whose dams were causing flooding and destruction of roadways, killing mature trees and interfering with migratory fish runs. A member of beaver advocacy group Worth A Dam compared the practice to “controlling speeding by destroying cars.”
This surprised me, because I didn’t think my letter was ever published. Ahhh but it was sent to a host of carefully chosen names, one of which was Drew Halfnight at the National Post. I thought his name looked familiar. “Halfnight” is the kind of Tolkein-worthy name one doesn’t forget. (“Go not halfgently into that halfnight...”)
Nuisance Beavers, May 15th
I was confused to read about the PEI ecision to trap another 150 beavers this year saying they “cause flooding and destruction of roadways, kill mature trees, contaminate water and interfere with migratory fish runs.” Damage to roads and culverts is easily managed, not with a ‘magic wand’ but with a wrench and some tubing. Beaver taking of trees produces a natural coppice cutting encouraging new and bushy growth which is why migratory and songbird population increase with the number of beaver dams in an area. Their dams actually improve water quality and act as a natural filtration system in streams. Although there are rare incidences of their carrying giardia when it is present in a stream they never cause it. (we do that) The misunderstood relationship between beavers and salmon though, is if the greatest concern. Research from NOAA fisheries in the past ten years has documented consistently the significant benefit beaver dams provide to juvenile salmonid. In fact in many places where beavers aren’t naturally present they are introduced or people are hired to build little ‘beaver dams!’.
If trapping was a successful, long term solution, PEI would not need to kill twice as many beavers this year as last year. I certainly don’t believe conibear or snare traps are humane, but I am more concerned about the inhumane treatment you are giving to all the wildlife and birds who depend on beaver ponds for their survival. I would recommend you do your own wildlife count in the area of the targeted beavers, so you can see for yourself next year the fallout of your decision. Beavers are a keystone species and the decision to solve the problems they cause by killing them is akin to controlling speeding by destroying cars. It would work, but at what cost? Flow devices and culvert fences are proven, inexpensive tools that require little maintenance or experience to install. Beavers are an investment in your watershed and removing 150 of them will have trickledown effects that PEI has clearly not considered – not the least of which is a population boom next year when you need to remove 300 and so on and so on.
I would be happy to provide more information or connect you with resources that can. Beaver management experts are a short trip away, including Skip Hilliker in Maine, Michael Callahan in Massachusetts, and Skip Lisle in Vermont. You don’t need a magic wand or a snare to solve beaver problems. You just need to be smarter than a beaver, which I assume most of PEI is.
Heidi Perryman, Ph.D.
President & Founder
Worth A Dam
Sometimes a good metaphor can stay in a reporters mind for two whole months! That’s pretty powerful!
