Osoyoos is a small town in British Columbia with a population hovering around 5000. for the past few months it’s been battling its residents over a plan to trap beaver. It’s even made national news and the CBC reported on it a couple times.
How’s that’s trapping thing working for you?
Town rethinks strategy in battle with Lakeshore Drive beaver
It’s an unpopular fight with a popular foe — and it has the Town of Osoyoos rethinking its strategy.
The Town has pulled traps it had set on Lakeshore Drive early this fall to catch a pesky beaver chewing on trees near a pond area adjacent to the Walnut Beach Resort.
“We attempted to trap the beaver, we failed. And then it seemed the public was apparently quite excited about (the process),” said Jim Dinwoodie, the Town’s Director of Operational Services.
“We thought if we weren’t going to be successful in catching the beaver, we might as well pull the traps and see what happens.”
Since it’s not working anyway, maybe we should actually listen to our residents and try something new. “If you can’t beat ’em. Induldge ’em,” Sounds good to me. I’m never happier than when our city forces a painful smile and agrees to do the crazy think I’m asking for. Remember Osoyoos is sandwiched between the smart people of Furbearer Defenders and the state of Washington (The smartest beaver management state in the USA) so its bound to have picked up some impressive beaver etiquette.
The beaver, Mr. Dinwoodie explained, was behind flooding that occurred in the pond in September. The animal had plugged a sewer that takes the pond’s overflow and other storm water underneath Lakeshore Drive to Osoyoos Lake.
The animal, which the Town believes is living in the lake, is chewing on trees in the area.
“What we don’t want to have happen is for the beaver to fall one of those trees on to somebody or a car or across the road,” he explained. “We’ve now wrapped those trees in chicken wire in an attempt to discourage the beaver from doing that.”
First of all, if your name is Mr Dinwoodie, you shouldn’t even be allowed to go outside, let alone hold an important public job and speak in a national news story. And second of all we’re not crazy about the chicken wire. Beavers are way bigger than chickens and if things get hungry enough it just won’t work.
He added, however, if the chicken wire doesn’t work, the Town may have to go back to its original strategy of trapping the beaver.
“Chicken wire doesn’t always work. “It also costs money — to chicken-wire every tree on that property, well, there’s a bunch of trees. We’re also trespassing on private property. We have the road right-of-way, but that’s where our property stops.
“(But) if a tree falls over on our road — because it’s a big tree — now it’s our problem.”
I see. You chose that particular solution because it fails and is prohibitively expensive. Got it. I’m thinking it’s one of those ‘stragic’ maneuvers where city employees try something they know will fail just to get those crazy protestors off their backs.
Speaking to the public outcry on local social media about trapping and killing Canada’s national symbol, CAO Barry Romanko wondered how local residents had come across the traps.
“We have people who are entering an area that is advertised as a closed area,” he said. “Those are safety hazards in themselves. The social media is taking about making sure a dog doesn’t get caught in a live trap.
“My question is, why is that dog off-leash? — because it’s supposed to be on-leash. And why are (people) in a restricted area?”
He also defended the Town’s use of traps to extract the beavers.
“I know it’s a difficult process for people to understand, but they are causing damage,” he said. “This is the way that they’re commonly dealt with.
Barry is an unpleasant little man, isn’t he? What is a CAO anyway? I had to check so I found out that it stands for “Chief Administrative Officer”. So the attitude towards beavers gets more bitter as you climb up the food chain. Hmm. That sounds like Martinez too.
The Town’s struggle with beavers — it receives around five requests a year from landowners looking for help with the pesky critters — is not unique. Governments across Canada are struggling with how to deal with the prodigious dam builders.
As beavers flourish across the country, the debate over what to do about them is building.
A 2013 Canadian Geographic article says the average adult beaver cuts approximately one metric tonne of wood — about 215 trees — for food and building materials.
“Not only do we complain when they compete with us for timber or meddle with the scenery, we also object when their dams flood highways, farm fields and waterfront real estate,” reads Rethinking the Beaver, a feature written by Frances Backhouse.
Now that’s a odd thing to reference. You mean to tell me you had access to the article written by Frances (They once were hats) Backhouse herself and your only take away from that piece was that “beavers cause problems all over Canada“? Not beavers save water, or beavers help fish, or beavers clean streams but beavers cause problems? Were you actually reading the words or just looking at the pictures?
I’m going to save you some heartache and do you a favor. Even though I don’t much care for your attitude. Pull up a chair Barrie and Dinwoodie. Call your local boyscout troop. Tell them to bundle up warm and invite them to a pizza party – but first hand them a paint brush and tell them their going to earn their ‘beaver badge’.
Take some latex paint that matches the color of the bark of those tree and mix it with some mason sand. Then stir it up til its good and gritty. Then have those boyscouts paint those trees you are afraid to spend money on chicken wire for. Give everyone a canadian nickle or buy them a beavertail pasty as a thank you.
Hell, while you’re at it, call the CBC and get them to take some photos of the day. Play the story up like you’re making lemonade out of lemons or teaching children about nature or some such bull, You’ll be a hero. You’ll thank me.
Do I honestly need to write anymore or can you take it from here?
