Beaver trapping class could pay off for students
The N.C. Trappers Association, working with the Soil and Water Conservation Service and the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, will sponsor a free trapping class Saturday at the Agriculture Extension office in Whiteville. Lunch will be provided, but pre-registration is required.
Dan Jones of Fair Bluff, a member of the NCTA board of directors and one of the instructors, said the interest in the class has been amazing.
“We have a lot more folks interested than we thought,” he said, “and people were asking about catching coyotes, so we decided to expand the class.”
I’m a patient woman. You might not think it, but I am. I read crazy stupid fabricated things about beavers every day and I still try not to swear and instead to express things creatively using a poem or a graphic or a story if I can. I’ve been known to hear out horrifically and willfully inaccurate remarks, and bite my tongue or dig my fingernails into my clenched fist while I struggle to find the right way to eventually answer. It’s not like I expect miraculous changes of heart from places like Columbus North Carolina. But I do irrationally hope for an ounce of sense. I desperately try not to fill every column with the letters WTF printed over and over again, but HONESTLY. A beaver trapping class for children! And now you’re going to add coyotes too! Aren’t there more things you can kill?
How about puppies?
The class was originally designed to help local trappers learn how to take advantage of the county’s new beaver bounty program. Responding to complaints about continued beaver problems in the county, the Columbus County Board of Commissioners formed a beaver committee last year. The committee proposed either increasing the county’s share in the Beaver Management Assistance Program (BMAP), which is run through the local USDA APHIS office, or establishing a bounty system. The commissioners approved both Monday. (See related story in The News Reporter).
APHIS! Perfect! So our federal tax dollars are paying to teach Jimmy how to trap beavers and coyotes! Registration includes lunch! And it’s filling up fast! How on earth could this story possibly get ANY better?
The name of the town is Whiteville.
________________________________________________
Need some good beaver news to rinse with? How about this story in Alberta
Wild St. Albert — busy, busy beavers
Wooly lumberjacks build homes for many
Suddenly, a shot rang out. CRACK! After a few confused moments, during which I tried to find the unseen hunter and give him a piece of my mind, it happened again. CRACK!
Eventually, I realized the truth; this was no lone gunman, but a busy beaver, smacking its tail against the water as it dived into the Sturgeon.
Beavers are everywhere in the Sturgeon, and are one of the most influential engineers on its waters. Beavers are actually a big benefit to the Sturgeon, Veenstra says, as they keep its water levels high.
Alberta was a much drier place in the absence of the beaver, Foote says. Their dams enhance groundwater recharge and create homes for moose, muskrats and bufflehead ducks. “They are an ecosystem engineer.”
Mind you, this is a actually a “dammed” with faint praise article because I had to cut and paste from both ends to put together a positive paragraph. We’re grading on a curve and it’s better than Whiteville. For some inexplicable reason they went through the trouble to get beaver commentary from the University of Alberta but NOT from Dr. Glynnis Hood, professor at the University and author of the Beaver Manifesto and charming, attractive, brilliant, carefree dropper of much, much better beaver copy than this:
“Contrary to popular belief, Foote notes, the tail is not used as a weapon and is not used to carry mud. “It’s also not very edible.”
Weapon?
