Oh no! Pender County North Carolina is having those rotten kind of beavers that plug things! What ever will they do? Well lets look at the map and guess shall we? Southern state, worried about stagnant water, gee I bet they’ll do what they always do.
Pender County considering ‘beaver bounty’ program to mitigate flooding
PENDER COUNTY, N.C. (WECT) – Flooding in Pender County over the past several years has been extremely damaging, displacing residents and destroying property. County staff is looking at a number of ways to improve drainage issues across the county, and perhaps surprisingly, as it turns out beavers might play a bigger role in flooding than most people would think.
“In the past four years, Pender County has been heavily impacted by flood events of historic proportion. These floods have caused significant damage to hundreds of families and businesses in Pender County, causing folks to lose their homes, crops, timber, and even their jobs. The flooding throughout the county was magnified by the drainage issues along the county’s vast network of streams, creeks and rivers. In many cases, the primary impediment to the flow of water is beaver dams,” according to Pender County staff.
Flooding over the last several YEARS? You mean you waited four years to solve this problem? Did the Trump administration just make you so happy you forgot to worry? Or did they stop investing in your BMAP monies? Any it’s Biden now. Time to kill beavers.
“The uncontrolled growth, fueled by a substantial decline in the value of beaver pelts and the lack of an existing predator, has led to an increase in dams that impede the county’s many waterways and tributaries. These dams contribute to the inability of water to properly drain from tributaries upstream through the county,” according to the Pender County Board of Commissioners agenda.
While there has been funding available to the county to clear out waterways, if beavers continue to rebuild their dams the work is futile.
“To better address the drainage problems, something must be done about the rodents that create the impediments to the natural flow of water. Otherwise, as past debris removal contractors have noticed, the beavers will begin rebuilding dams almost immediately. It is not cost effective to continue this practice without addressing the root of the problem – the beavers themselves,” according to county staff.
Wanna guess what there plan looks like? I’m betting it starts and ends with hiring someone to kill all the beavers. Hey maybe they can even get Biden to pay for it. That would be sweet.
- Develop a new full-time position, titled Watershed and Drainage Technician, whose primary responsibility is to address drainage issues throughout the county, including trapping beavers, removing their dams, and administering the proposed Beaver Bounty Program.
- Implement a Beaver Bounty Program that connects landowners to private trappers who will be paid a bounty by the county for each beaver removed.
- Management of the drainage improvement program be assigned to the Planning and Community Development Department, with assistance from the Pender Soil and Water Conservation District Office.
So you’re going to hire someone full time AND pay trappers a bounty to kill beavers? Sure. But please don’t expect Fema to help you when you suddenly worry about drought and not having enough water for your farms or your crops, okay?
Pender County is not alone with its beaver woes, Columbus County already has a bounty program in place and offers $40 per beaver collected. The program has been highly successful removing more than 1,000 beavers since its implementation.
“Columbus County started a bounty program in 2012 that pays $40 per trapped beaver. Columbus County has found their bounty program to be highly effective in managing the number of beavers in the county. In FY 2012-13, the first year of the bounty program, Columbus County collected 718 beavers. As the number of beavers in the county becomes more manageable, it is anticipated that fewer will be collected each year. In FY 2016-17 and FY 2017-18, Columbus County collected 390 and 404 beavers, respectively,” according to Pender County staff.
Columbus county is the very bottom of the state and is listed by wikipedia as having 16 square miles of water. The odds of them trapping 718 beavers in 16 square miles of water are not very good. Unless you think about the number of times they crossed the state lines and got beavers from South Carolina too.
At 40 bucks a tail you can’t leave these things to chance, you know.
From initial documents, it appears Pender County is ready to pay $50 per beaver collected from the county. However, it would not be a free-for-all, trappers would be contracted to collect the beavers.
“Pender County will provide public notice for licensed beaver trappers to register to be on the County’s trapping list. Trappers will be required to show a valid trappers license, issued by the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission before being admitted on the list,” according to Pender County staff.
Fifty dollars a tail? Whoa. That means if you kill a family of five you could afford the materials for a flow device instead. Hey what if that full time position was for a technician who knew how to install a flow device? Then the money you spent would be for a long term solution instead of a quick fix that had to be paid for again in two years.
Oh I know. That’s crazy talk.
