beaver trapping – Page 4

“It’s too hard”

heidi08 Beaver News, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Massachusetts Trapping Law, Who's Killing Beavers Now? October 24, 2010

The poor sportsman and sore losers club at the Massachusetts Committee for Responsible Wildlife Management continue to bemoan the inadequate list of nine exceptions to the beaver-trapping law. They feel burdened by the remarkably simple standards the law requires them to meet. Just to be clear, when any single one of these conditions are met, beavers can be killed in every convenient fashion. However, in the rare instance when no such condition is present, the animals can still be killed, just not with leg hold or body crushing traps. Apparently its toooooooo hard for their little trapper brains to meet a standard and ask permission, (even though I’ve never read even a single story of any request being turned down).

It seems like every 6 months we get new complaints about the awful flooding caused by the increase in beavers in Massachusetts that blames the crazy hippies who were tricked into banning leg hold and body crushing traps in 1996. To these troglodyte minds, the onerous burden of being asked to spend five minutes completing the necessary request is a bridge too far: they won’t stand for it! Now the powerful lobby has attached more exceptions to the exception list in a rider that slipped in at the end of the house session. It sits politely on the governor’s desk with a name like “protecting babies” or “safer streets” to await his unknowing signature. The Massachusetts Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is asking residents to call and remind the governor that there are already perfectly adequate lethal solutions in place and we don’t need to add more. Perhaps you’d like to join them.

Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions, who is admirably much more even-handed than I, was interviewed about the story yesterday by CBS channel 3 Springfield. Now this is must see TV!

Treacherous Waters

heidi08 History February 22, 2010

This weekend I embarked on some historic sniffing to help our wikipedia friend in his effort to document the presence of beavers in the South Bay. Knowing the history is an important defense for the argument that “beavers don’t belong here so kill them”. Most have heard of the reference for Captain Sutter bringing 1500 pelts to the San Jose mission, but the question remains whether they were taken from local beavers or are “imports”.

So it’s a matter of following up with who trapped where and what they found, and its a lot more exciting than you might think, although sometimes I am pushed into reading something I really should leave to others with harder hearts. This is what I found this weekend, trailing facts about the Fur desert, the Hudson Bay Company and the use of native peoples as trappers.

Ice chisels on long poles. Shades of Basic Instinct come to mind. Except times a billion. First drain their pond, then lock them in their homes. Can you imagine someone nailing poles to trap our beavers in their lodge and hacking them to death with an ice chisel? I’m still shuddering. Hmm well I’m sure some would have imagined it if they had known that was how its done.

Build a better mousetrap, the saying goes. The article goes on to describe the slow progress of beaver genocide even after the arrival of the steel trap in the 1750’s. Apparently no one could figure out what to bait them with. A tasty willow leaf just wasn’t cutting it, and they didn’t seem interested in fish. (No kidding!) By accident it was discovered that they went crazy for the smell of castoreum, (oil from their scent glands) which was easy enough to get from the beaver you caught yesterday. By 1818 most natives were trapping beaver with steel traps they bought from trappers and baited with Castoreum.

Game. Set. Match.

Gosh. It really IS like basic instinct. Using your own sexuality against you. Luring you in with the promise of a good time and then hacking you to pieces. So when beavers tried to procreate and identify their family members they were killed. Although the slaughter taught them to adapt to a nocturnal life and start building sneaky bank lodges instead of obvious island lodges, evolution couldn’t possibly eliminate THAT instinct. Charming.

And this is why I should dedicate my spare time to connecting with supporters and potential supporters, and stop reading historical snuff films. Note to self.

Tis the Season…

heidi08 Beaver News, Beavers elsewhere November 28, 2009

With the lovely full Beaver Moon earlier this month. It’s official. We’re in beaver-trapping season. Historically the winter months were chosen so their fur would be at its thickest and the pelts worth most. Also the ice and snow makes them easier to track. This article from Cornwall, Ontario, highlights the risks that these traps can have for other (more valued) animals.

Wyatt Walsh was walking his dog in Guindon Park last week when he almost got trapped. He unknowingly stepped on a beaver trap, but fortunately, it had already been set off. “If it hadn’t been disengaged, it would have gotten my dog.”

The horrors! A cruel, inhumane trap used to maim and kill an unwanted pest nearly injured an animal that people choose on purpose! Oh the humanity! Fortunately Wyatt and his pooch got away safely and the city agreed to put up “killing fields” signs to warn hapless pedestrians.

City parks and landscaping supervisor Laurie Weatherall said there are “two or three” traps being used in Guindon Park, over the past few weeks. Weatherall said they initially had concerns about erecting signs as they feared it could attract unwanted attention to the traps. As for the traps, Weatherall said they aren’t located directly on the trails.

Did you catch that? We would have warned people about the risk but some crazy beaver-huggers might have gotten upset if we tipped them off. It is hard to kill beavers when your busy getting angry phone calls. You can bet these are leg hold traps, too, so there’s no need to check them often. The dead animal will just stay put until you can get to it.

Expect that the snap of leg hold traps, or the clink of conibear, or even the rattle of hancock (live until shot through the head with a .22) traps takes some 5-10 beavers a week, per trapper. Several hundred a season. Although no one really knows the number because no one tallys the bodies. In season there’s no need to report how many were taken. If you imagine every community like Cornwall or Oshawa or Martinez taking out 2-3 colonies of beavers multiplied by 50 states and several hundred municipalities the death count is fairly staggering.

Meanwhile, cities bemoan their decreasing rainfall, hurt from their lost salmon season, or worry about the quality of the water they’re filling with pesticides and fertilizers. They keep dutifully writing checks to their scrubby trappers and begrudgingly put out warning signs that no beavers can read. Then they wonder why the population rebounds in a year or two and the check needs to be bigger.

Here’s the only good part of the article:

Walsh believes the trap he encountered had already been set off intentionally by someone else and placed next to a culvert, where he came across it.