Emily the Trapper is 26, smart, loves animals, and thinks your ideas about fur trapping are all wrong

As a 26-year-old female, Lamb is a rarity among fur trappers, but her work ethic and foul mouth quickly endeared her to colleagues. While some of the fur she harvests is sold for use in the fashion industry, she also works closely with government officials, wildlife researchers and the oil industry to help study and sustain animal populations in the wild

Lamb has always found animals beautiful. She used to spend entire afternoons sitting in the hay feeder on her family’s Sundre-area farm when she was a girl just so she could see the cows up close when they came to eat. After graduating from high school, Lamb decided she wanted to be a veterinarian or a Fish and Wildlife officer. She eventually earned a diploma in Wildlife and Forestry Conservation online, then began an internship with the Cochrane Ecological Institute.

Joining the business as an outsider was a challenge for Lamb. So was being the first and only woman in the company. “You don’t expect a girl is going to be OK with going out and killing stuff,” she told me. Lamb found the physical demands gruelling. “It’s pretty intense work,” she said. “Tearing around with 70- or 80-pound beavers in your backpack for undeterminable distances. And setting traps with poundage enough to break your arms.” There is also, of course, the locker-room talk that comes with being the sole woman in a crew of men. “Trust me, I hear about a million beaver jokes a day,” she said with a laugh. She considers the ribbing good-natured. “Obviously, I am an easy-going gal.”

This is any trapping company’s wet dream. A cute, young, sympathetic girl they can push to the front of the line to put a humane face on their ghoulish activities. No wonder the paper dedicated 6 entire pages to her story. (No word yet on when it will run a 6 page story on beaver benefits, or the rodent rebound from trapping coyotes, or why wolves help rivers.) There’s no time for fluff pieces like that when we have a cute 26 year old voyageur to write about.

Trappers are rarely paid for these contributions. They do it because they share a common commitment to wildlife understanding and sustainability. This is something Lamb wants the public to understand. “All of us–hunters, trappers, environmentalists, tree-huggers, hippies–every one of us, in the end, wants there to be as big and as healthy a population of wildlife as possible. Period.”

The style of beaver trap Abercrombie and Lamb use is a “body-grip killing trap”–often called a Conibear trap after inventor Frank Conibear–which a beaver springs by swimming into it. The trap is powerful enough to break a person’s arm. “That’ll wreck you pretty good,” Lamb said. The Conibear’s loaded jaws will catch a beaver around the neck and fracture its spine while compressing the carotid artery in its neck. Death comes painlessly and instantaneously.2 “The animal is living his life the way he lives his life, doing what he does every day,” Lamb said. “Then he’s not.”

Why is it that if you say that beavers are good for fish or wildlife reporters have to talk to someone who thinks differently to present a balance – but if you say conibears never make wildlife suffer they just obediently write it down with a flourish? Is there nobody in Alberta who disagrees with Emily? I’m assuming from the 60+ comments that there are. Maybe you could have contacted Dr. Hood for a quote about the impact of trapping beaver on surrounding wildlife?

Furthermore, the selective trapping of overpopulated animals like beavers and coyotes sustains their numbers. Abercrombie “traps out” about half of the beaver lodges on Chip Lake. In this way, he doubles the resources available for the remaining colonies and reduces their competitive stress. “I am keeping the population at a consistent high level on the lake by employing trapping as a management tool.” Abercrombie told me that 10 years ago, without enough trapping on the lake, the beavers clear cut the trees off every island. “They literally ate themselves out of house and home.” Those that didn’t starve contracted parasitic infections due to overcrowding. Eventually, every one of Chip Lake’s 200 beavers died. Now, thanks to Abercrombie’s trapping, about 60 individuals reside on the lake, a little more than half of what he figures the area can support.

You do realize animals move locations right? I mean if they chop the trees in one lake they move to another lake while those trees are coppicing and coming back to life? If you drink all the beer in your refrigerator what do you do? I assume there are more trees at the lake than there are in Alhambra Creek. Its been 7 years and our beavers haven’t eaten themselves out of house and home or died of tularemia. I’m surprised the Alberta beaver species must be way more greedy.

“As a trapper, this is my responsibility,” Abercrombie said. “I do it as a steward on behalf of the citizens of Alberta. I manage the fur-bearer resource in this area. That’s what trappers do. The government doesn’t do it. The animal-rights people don’t do it. We do it.”

Oh pul-eeze. I can’t stand this much selfless patriotism without a martini. I’m reminded of a certain self-justifying poem by Oscar Wilde.

And all men kill the thing they love,

By all let this be heard,

Some do it with a bitter look,

Some with a flattering word,

The coward does it with a kiss,

The brave man with a sword!

Oscar Wilde

Hood-winked

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental October 17, 2011

The rodent refuses to play by our rules

They grace our money and symbolize our national parks. Yet Canada is in conflict with the beaver. Its hard work and tenacity – traits we value – also put them at odds with us, explains Glynnis hood in this edited excerpt from The beaver manifesto

Early settlers wore beaver hats to keep warm and not for any sort of symbolism for or against the rodent. This one was spotted on the head of executive board member Paul Pruszynski at the 2006 Turin Olympic Winter Games. Photograph by: Donald Miralle, Getty Images, Calgary Herald

Go check out the glorious Glynnis Hood article in this sunday’s Calgary Herald. It is an excerpt from her new book and squarely confronts the myriad of reasons we dislike beavers – even though like broccoli or brusell sprouts – we know they’re good for us.

So why all the conflict between beavers and humans? My theory is that two control freaks will battle over the same tree until long after the last of its stump decays back into the forest. Humans simply do not like to be outdone by a rodent, plain and simple. The historical record, however, shows that not only the beaver but also the Norway rat and the mouse have almost always won the war. Although cockroaches are touted as the most persistent animals on the planet, they were never trapped for their furs, turned into hats or marketed as a perfume. The evidence is in, and rodents rule the world.

Hmm….When I was chatting with the grad student at the beaver dam about what research remains to be done I was tempted to say, “We don’t need any more research! We know beavers are good for water and insects and fish and birds and riparian borders and pollutants and soil and mammals and climate change! They only research left to do is why in the hell we are so resistant to an investment in our creeks that will do our job for us!”

(But being that her field is NOT psychology, that topic probably won’t inspire a dissertation.)

Go read the article, but I would venture to disagree with Glynnis on one point. Beavers aren’t control freaks. They could never have adapted as well as they have if they insisted on having things ‘their way’. I have seen beavers tolerate intrusions, thefts and interruptions a human could never endure. Beavers are more like very persistent buddists. They work very hard to do what’s possible, but when things are not possible they give up and do it somewhere else.

We should all be so pragmatic.

Speaking of what’s impossible, yesterday the universe has decided to play the very funny joke on me in the form of a trojan that opens security doors to my computer every time I do a google search. I am furiously working to repair it because an internet without the capacity to search is very like a perfectly tuned automobile with no tires, and a very very bad idea for anyone who saves beavers for a hobby. Microsoft said, pah, I don’t see anything! Anti-Malware said, ooh there’s something nasty but its too big for me to get. I am now on the 15 hour of an Ad-aware scan, and then it will be time to bring in the big guns, so wish me luck!

Head of the Class-less

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Who's Killing Beavers Now? January 26, 2011

Roger Kelley was walking his dog on Sunday in Fish Creek Park when he came across a trap with a beaver head in it. He is upset that beaver traps would be set in an area popular with people and animals. He went back and posted signs warning people, but the trap had already been removed.

Photograph by: Lorraine Hjalte, Calgary Herald, Calgary Herald

I was sent this article yesterday by Catherine Ens who we met during the St. Catherine’s beaver bruhaha. It seems Mr. Kelley was walking his dog through the park and came a cross a severed beaver head in a spring trap. Nice visual. Officials say they have to control the population and an animal had dragged it out of the water over night. Mr. Kelley’s upset because that could have been Fido and feels the park should post signs that there are traps in the water. To be fair, it’s the problem-solving-skills I’m calling ‘classless’, Mr. Kelley’s just…speciest….is that a word?

One could quip that maybe the park staff are worried about putting up warning signs because it would give the beavers such a head start but I recently saw this which makes the whole thing a little more clear.

Traps were set underwater by a Village-hired trapper at the lake and lagoon last weekend to kill the beavers. Town staff said it was believed to be the best immediate solution. The traps were removed just two days later, after people began springing the devices and tossing them into deep water. Traps had also been stolen.

“We had put these in restricted areas … but people kept going in there and triggering the traps. That’s dangerous and we had a concern for public safety,” said David Durrant, manager of community services for the Village of Cumberland.

See, if they put a sign out everyone will try to save the beavers and spring or steal the traps, and if they don’t put a sign out the dog-walkers will complain its not safe! Poor Park officials! They’re damned if they do and dammed if they don’t! (Get it?). Hey, Fish Creek Park, I have an idea! How about you earn some major brownie points by solving the beaver problems without trapping! You go to the hardware store and pick up some PVC pipe and wire, spend an hour eating popcorn and watching Mike’s DVD and then use some boyscouts to install a flow device and control your water problem so that the beavers stay! I bet your fish will thank you for it, and you can borrow some binoculars so you can sit back and watch all the wildife that’s drawn to that pond.

What am I saying? That’s too logical. I guess they’d rather deal with this.

If you’re at all like me you need cheering up after that beaver-head story. Might I recommend this video, pointed out to me by Lory yesterday. I promise it will make you smile, and think about age difference because these babies are three months old. Pretty different than beavers at three months. Enjoy!