Well, Mike Callahan confirms he did, in fact, do a training for the staff in London Ontario a few years back, but he has no speculation on the flow device where the outtake pipe goes uphill. Our filmmaker friend from Windswept, Doug Knutson says that London is the wildlife management ideal they’re working for in his city and shares this report. You can tell by the nutria on the over photo that Belleville  has a long way to go.

Councillor McCaw says Friendly City shouldn’t be killing wildlife

Belleville is delaying any move to adopt a new policy on how to deal with wildlife in the city, including beavers.

City council had called for a new policy, following an incident last fall, when residents in the east end rescued a beaver caught in a trap and drowning. The policy presented to council  by staff this week included rules that live traps should be used as a first step, and killing traps only as a last resort.

In public areas traps would be set in the evening and removed in early morning to avoid danger to the public and pets. The proposed policy indicated that when animals are found in live traps, they are to be humanely euthanized.

Did you catch that? Our old policy is that beavers would be trapped. But our new one is that beavers can either be trapped and killed right away or trapped and killed later.  The timing changes. The killing, you see, does not. In addition the city will remove the traps in the morning and post signs to warn residents.

Mighty white of you, says every beaver, ever.

This just isn’t good enough for Doug, who is still pushing for better options.

So the city will agree to take care of resident’s delicate fee-fees, but what about using a flow device or solving the problem without killing?

The city would evaluate the area for potential options such as Beaver Baffler or Beaver Cone, prior to any trapping activity. Councillor Kelly McCaw said she couldn’t support it, adding “We are a friendly city and shouldn’t be killing our way out of a situation.”

That’s the best part of the article. We love Kelly. There’s a scene in Hamlet where he’s trying to pry information out of his school friends that have been warned by his parents not to cooperate.  He innately senses that one of them is about to crack and zeroes in on that guy.

Hamlet: Be even and direct with me whether you were sent for or no.
Rosencrantz: (to his friend) What say you?
Hamlet: Nay, then I have an eye of you – if you love me hold not off!

And in my mind, even now, this phrase springs into my mind when I think I have found the proverbial weak link in the chain, and thus the way in. As I believe Doug very clearly has found with Ms. Kelly McGraw. I would stick by her side and feed her all the information she needs and maybe throw in some very cute photos of beavers as well. Maybe some kids drawings beavers too. You are welcome to any of ours.

Doug has bravely moved the train from “We’ll kill beavers whenever we like” up the tracks to “We’ll be thoughtful about public impact when killing beavers.” Which is hard to do. But if you want to force it to the next station, which is the hardest part of the climb, I would stay close to Kelly.

Because it all starts with a willingness to think that killing isn’t right and there should be a better way. And where it goes from there is up to people like us.