RUMFORD — Speculation ran rampant at Thursday night’s selectmen’s meeting that landowners, timber harvesting and beavers contributed to local road damage from Tropical Storm Irene’s heavy rains.
Maine law requires landowners to give the town permission to trap beavers. But that can only be done during the trapping season from December to March, unless the town pays for live trapping.
“These beavers have more rights than our citizens do,” Selectman Jolene Lovejoy said.
Goodness! I had NO idea residents could be trapped and killed off season in Maine. No wonder they’re upset. Selectman-(woman) Lovejoy should work to change that. Irene came in with her big wet tantrum and ruined everybody’s roads. Now they’re trying to figure out what could have been prevented. At the postmortem meeting Thursday night, this pearl of wisdom was discharged.
It’s possible I’m misreading the quote. But the message appears to be that it’s very inconvenient that beavers can only be killed at certain times of year. I agree. I guess it has to do with some nonsense about orphans and population. Since she goes on to say that beavers have MORE rights than citizens it must mean taxpayers can be killed year round?
Don’t say you weren’t warned Rumford.
I guess she-of-the-double-misnomer could be using hyperbolic language to make a dramatic point and viscerally connect with the voters. I guess instead of being a remark about there being no ‘take’ limit on residents it was actually a complaint that there are any restrictions whatsoever on beaver killing. Hmm, that would make more sense, but it would also make Ms. Lovejoy’s statement a complete and utter lie, since obviously residents have a great deal many more rights than beavers, (including the right not to be killed in their beds).
Which one is it, then, Jolene? Would you rather be described as threatening your voters or lying to them?
Huh. In the meantime, if you’d like to actually FIX the problem in stead of having a little finger-pointing party, you could bring in Mike or Skip to install a flow device at the offending beaver dam and safely lower the water level to protect your road. You can read all about these newfangled contraptions here.
And as for beavers having more protections than residents, I can only say that beavers raise the watertable, augment fish populations, increase migratory and songbird numbers, restore important game species and control and direct silt. I assume your voters don’t?
