Flatline Learning Curve

The forward-thinking province of Saskatchewan, (which narrowly rejected a plan to offer ‘beaver bounties for citizens who bravely kill their own beavers), just announced it will come up with half a million dollars to kill beavers at the municipal level. The minister of hyperbole has granted license to claim the beaver population has EXPLODED in recent years and there is certainly nothing else they could do to prevent rodents from blocking culverts and building dams. Never mind those pesky environmentalists who claim that beavers raise the water table and slow water movements by creating ponds. No one’s trapping anymore because the value of fur has declined in recent years and all these beavers won’t kill themselves!

The Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, known as SARM, says beavers are damaging rural infrastructure and private property. SARM president David Marit said Wednesday that part of the problem is the exploding beaver population.

Exploding beavers? Now that does sound dangerous! No wonder you found 500,000 to fight it! I guess America has seen shoe bombs and underwear bombs in the last few years, so why NOT an exploding beaver! It’s insidious!

Ohh. I just received a wire from the Ministry of Dangling Participles clarifying that the population of beavers has exploded, not the beavers themselves. Whew. That’s a relief! I was going for my beaver-proof vest. I’m curious though, how do you know the population has exploded? I mean when is the last time you did a regional count and how do you know the numbers have increased?

Funny thing about Beaver trapping. When governments rush in to take out massive groups of beavers, populations have a way of recovering. In fact they often rebound, with more food available for fewer beavers and female caloric intake increasing so that brood size increases. You end up doing the same thing all over again in 1-2 years.

Hopefully you set aside another 500,000 dollars to take care of that problem?

Or you could be proactive. Install culvert fences, flow devices and wrap trees. Allow beavers to manage your water and increase the population of things that are more valuable to trap. Regina is about 9 hours from Dr. Glynnis Hood whose beaver research has made the world take notice. She’s actually very knowledgeable about beaver management. I’m sure she could connect you with some graduate students that would come install flow devices for the cost of a pack of Skittles. You can by an awful lot of Skittles with 500,000 dollars.

But then you’d have all that money left over, every year, and your wildlife population would improve and your province will be known for its humane pragmatism. You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?

Bounty is a highly evocative word, especially as we mark the steep descent to Thanksgiving and see the looming holidays rise in stark relief. It can mean richness, sufficiency, having more than one needs. It means there’s enough to share, enough to give away, enough to set some aside, enough to pace oneself. “Go ahead and take some, I’ve got plenty” or “That’s enough fish for one day, son, we can come back and catch more tomorrow”. Bounty means freely given or giving freely.

Bounty also has another meaning. As in “Bounty Hunter”. The state pays citizens for the death of an undesirable thing, ridding the commonwealth of a threat or a nuisance. Early days in the Wild West offered a bounty for criminals when the government was too young or too overwhelmed to catch lawbreakers themselves. Bounty hunters are pictured often as ruthless, loathsome, frightening characters. Usually their only alliance is to the dollar they seek and they left the niceties of society long ago. Every once in a while it is probably true to say that they are a little romanticized: a grizzled Clint Eastwood character relying on no one for help and handling the problem themselves for a fistful of dollars.

12.50 a tail, to be exact.

The bounty is $12.50 per tail individually wrapped in clear plastic and frozen until collection day. Landowners may trap the beavers themselves or use the services of a trapper. Bimonthly collection days will be scheduled beginning in January.

Remind me not to have a glass of iced tea when I visit friends in Alcorn, Mississippi. Their freezers will be stuffed with beaver tails until the collection days and god knows what else after that. Let’s just hope little Jimmy doesn’t mistake his popsicle. Apparently the bounty is a cheap way to get beaver problems to take care of themselves.

Last year’s demonstration program was considered a success with 126 landowners participating and 605 beavers eliminated on more than 9,200 acres

Now that’s a deal! A mere 7500 dollars to get rid of 602 beavers! That means landowners killed around 5 beavers each and made a cool 60 bucks for their effort. Heck that almost pays for the freezer space and the electric bill to keep it going! I guess it really isn’t very lucrative, but it takes care of a problem and it gets the kids outdoors. Maybe the families all gather around while Pa cuts off the tail. Wonder what they do with the rest of the beaver? I guess I probably shouldn’t ask.

I read an article this weekend on the troublesome beavers of Saskatchewan, Canada, where adoption of a beaver bounty was narrowly rejected. The agriculture minister was bemoaning the population rise and saying that this was unfortunately because “No one was trapping anymore”. (There are apparently three websites for trappers associations in Saskatchewan, but maybe that doesn’t matter.)

“If fur prices were a little higher it’d solve our problem on the coyote side and the beaver side,” Bjornerud said. “They’re not worth much right now and that’s our biggest problem.”

Ah, no, Mr. Bjornerud. I really don’t think that’s your biggest problem. I would rate your lack of imagination, your knee-jerk problem-solving skills and your failure to think humanely as three bigger problems that spring immediately to mind. Not to mention the complete ecological blind spot your vision is shadowed by when you fail to think about the trickle down effect all that beaver killing will have on your entire region. Well, why bother thinking ahead and planning for solutions that will take care of your farmlands and your watershed? You can always blame it on the rodent.

I can think of only one fitting response to these tail-paying plans.