This is an odd news day. There are two new articles on beavers that appear to be nobly motivated and they are both woefully deficient. I’m thinking they are both intended to mollify the crazy beaver lovers so that the serious people can continue trapping.
The first is from Chilliwack British Columbia, which is North East of Seatte about an hour east if Port Moody. (We must all try very hard not to giggle at their name.) (There are more important things to ridicule).
Chilliwack formalizing its approach to beavers
When it comes to beaver management in Chilliwack, council is ready to formalize its practices. Beaver activity can cause flooding and drainage problems. Blocked culverts can damage roads. Dikes can be weakened by burrowing, leading to flooded public and private lands.
With hundreds of kilometres of open watercourses across Chilliwack, there can be “a resident beaver” every square kilometre. “Managing the activities of wildlife must reflect a balanced approach to protecting public infrastructure and private property, public safety and the environment,” stated the report.
Any trapping to remove nuisance beavers is used as an absolute last resort.
Hmm, that sounds reasonable. I’m not a greedy woman, Trapping as a last resort would totally mollify me. What kinds of things are you going to try before trapping?
Management follows a series of co-ordinated and progressive steps, starting with “monitoring” and then: tree wrapping; dam removal by hand; removal of debris/blockage; and finally, mechanical dam removal.
“When no other effective means of preventing or controlling the potential damage or risk to public safety due to the activities of beavers is available, they may be removed by trapping.”
A provincially licensed trapper must be employed.
So no flow devices or culvert fences. No actual solutions just taking away the dam which you KNOW is going to be rebuilt. And then you can do what you always planned to do but call it a solution of last resort.
That should keep those environmentalists happy.
The only truly helpful thing they are adding to their list is wrapping trees. But it doesn’t clarify how they plan to do this. So I’m guessing doily’s.
Honestly I just hate it when people say they’re going to try to help beavers and they obviously aren’t. It’s way worse than those grim cities that just issue a payment per tail. At least the people that will care about this stay watchful and keep paying attention.
The second story comes from Virginia bemoaning how beavers have come back in droves since the fur trade. Go ahead and guess what the photo is for their cover story. Guess.
“Physical damage caused by beavers in the Southeast is estimated in the millions of dollars annually,” reads the beaver link at humanwildlife.org.
Give them this — they do good work.“Beavers are important in that they create new habitats that benefit a variety of other animals,” says the game department.
“Their dams slow the flow of moving waters and allow other wildlife and plant species to colonize this modified ecosystem.”
It is an exceptionally happy — albeit waterlogged — community there described. “Ducks and other waterfowl, as well as many reptiles, amphibians, and aquatic insects, are attracted to beaver ponds.”
What, curious taxpayers ask, can be done?
Two broad categories of control are non-lethal and the opposite.
The odd thing is that this article cites Stephanie Boyles great paper even though it carefully skirts the point that installing flow devices saves communities thousands of dollars and works longer than trapping.
I guess we can’t expect them to get the facts right since they can’t even choose an accurate photo.
Can we have some real beaver articles please soon?
