There’s been a confusing amount of good news lately. A reader of this website could get the mistaken impression that things were all rosy for beavers and beaver understanding everywhere. You might think that everyone wants them in urban and rural settings to take care of amphibians, water storage, and salmonids. You might think that people had stopped blaming them for power blackouts and giardiasis outbreaks.
But you’d be wrong.
Beaver Blamed for Taking Down Utility Pole
A State Trooper spotted the tree down on the wires at Circle Drive in Roaring Brook Township early Tuesday morning. Crews on the scene tell Eyewitness News, a beaver living in a nearby pond gnawed on the tree, toppling it on the lines. It doesn’t appear anyone lost any power, and the tree will be removed.
Now that’s more like it….blaming a fallen pole on a beaver even though the power company is supposed to trim away anything that can fall on lines during a storm. Anything in the standard nuisance line? Maybe with a euphemism about ‘removing’ them instead of admitting the lethal truth?
Plans to Remove Nuisance Beavers in Sparks
SPARKS, Nev. – The City of Sparks has obtained a permit from the Nevada Department of Wildlife to remove nuisance beavers from a drainage ditch along Sparks Boulevard.
“It’s basically the North Truckee drain and it’s the end of that rather elaborate irrigation system that comes off the Truckee River and heads into Spanish Springs and then the water drains back towards the Truckee River,” said Chris Healy of the Nevada Department of Wildlife.
“When they build the dams they need material to do it and they start in on the trees. Some were wrapped and they still did damage to the point where we lost that tree,” Healy said. “That’s the real tragedy because what about the birds that utilize the area, use the trees to roost in and nest in. It’s a better area when we have trees surrounding waterways.”
“We do not allow beavers to be moved; you could be moving disease to a healthy beaver population,” Healy said. “Also, too many beavers in one place leads to trees being felled by those beavers. Anywhere there is appropriate habitat in the state of Nevada, beavers are there.”
Bonus points for getting NDOW to call it a drainage ditch, I’m sure that’s what you wrote on your permit, and they’re just reading it verbatim. Good work enlisting the services of Chris Healy to turn environmentalists against each other and spread the lie that you need to kill beavers to save birds. Near as I can tell Chris is the public [dis]information officer for NDOW, which has a swanky website promoting what a great place Nevada is for everyone that’s not a beaver.
And they TRIED working with residents to do this humanely, look how hard they tried! 2 and a half feet of chicken wire! If beavers had been chickens this would never have happened.
Sparks is just outside Reno, which puts it firmly in Sierra Wildlife Coalition territory. In fact the article features a slanted interview with a beaver defender who calls them ‘wonderful creatures’ and says that traps are inhumane. If I can get a hold of her I’ll advise her to call them out for calling a living stream a drainage ditch, and show them some data on how beavers help birds. My personal preference is always to try and be ‘less huggy, more sluggy’ – to coin a phrase.
The fact that the beavers will be killed doesn’t sit well with some residents. A small group gathered at the corner of Rock and Victorian Avenue Thursday night with signs they hoped would get their message across.
“Beavers are our friends, they are nature’s engineers,” said Connie DeAngelis. She’s heard that the traps are going to be placed underwater.
“A beaver can stay alive up to 15 minutes underwater so for them to put a beaver through this is tortuous treatment to kill it and eliminate it because it’s eating trees, because it’s doing the things it’s supposed to do, it’s just hideous,” DeAngelis said. “It’s sickening and there are other ways to relocate beavers, there has been a lot of studies done. The fact that they wouldn’t look for a more humane way to do this is very disappointing to me and to a lot of people that don’t know about this yet.”
I just friended Connie on Facebook. Lets see if we can sent a little beaver help her way. The thing I don’t understand is why the news knows about the permit. It’s not like every depredation permit is reported on the 5 oclock rundown. Even though it should be, since you’re taking the beavers away from everyone. The best possible explanation would be that some friend at NDOW let it leak. But I doubt that. I can’t imagine the city has to announce when they are getting a depredation permit. Martinez certainly didn’t.
So how is this public? Hmmm.
Tree planing today. Wish our heroic workers luck!
