The gloomy ends of 350+ beavers arrived in my mail box yesterday. Many grim thanks to Robin Ellison of Napa who alternately poked, prodded and cajoled them out of CDFW’s bloody hands with a painstaking PRA. We are currently on number 30, and Placer is still leading the pack. It is of course edifying to read why the permit must be issued (Eating gardens seems to be the number one complain still) but I’m even more fascinated by the section at the end where they list the steps they took to solve the problem without killing.
You’d be amazed how many write “HAZING”.
Beyond this, the climate has changed now, and whether I’m reading a permit for Cordelia, or Mountain House, or El Dorado Hills its all freshly horrible because I KNOW those beavers. It’s like skimming through the year book of Columbine. Or worse, Newtown. One permit was issued for Truckee and actually said “A local group installed a flow device, but the area is still flooding” so they got a permit to kill 10 beavers that our friends at Sierra Wildlife Coalition tried to save.
Imagine how surprised I was to see a permit issued to an anonymous source in Martinez, for UNLIMITED BEAVER. The complaints include blocking a water treatment plant and residential flooding, but it doesn’t say where. We’ve been scrambling to try and track down the source but the location and relevant info is redacted. The scary part is that it was issued 2 months before our kits started dying, but poison is not a legal method of take, so that’s a little reassuring at least.
We’ve got lots of work to do today though, if you know a little bit about using a spreadsheet we could use your help. Send me an email and we’ll give you 25 and the template?
+
