Or maybe how many fingers it has…or whether there actually IS a right hand at all. Remember the beaver-dragonfly dilemma of Upton Massachusetts? They wanted the dams gone and the beavers dead but the ponds maintained to preserve the rare dragonfly. I heard from Mike Callahan that he had been out to present to the commission and they were half in favor of hiring him and half against. I guess they both got their way because this mornings article makes as much sense as any series of opposite contradictions I’ve ever not-read.
Upton commission decides to lower water level in war on local beavers
Conservation Commission members said last night they will give a beaver control specialist the go-ahead to lower the water level on the 30-acre bog by a foot over the next two weeks, 6 inches per week.
Michael Callahan of Beaver Solutions in Southampton will install a $1,280 pond leveler, a pipe system that pumps water out while keeping beavers away, over the next two weeks, but that is only a short-term solution, Conservation Commissioner Marcella Stasa said.
“Once the level is down, we have to trap all the beavers, because their inclination is to bring the level up to where it was,” she said.
Where to begin? I was excited at the beginning of this article but my hopes were well and truly dashed by the end. Seems one of the commissioners is a former trapper, which, well why shouldn’t he be on the conservation commission? Things that are dead are conserved, right? – well, preserved? After they finish paying Mike for getting in the near-freezing water and installing the pipe the former trapper has volunteered to pick them off one by one.
Commissioner Tom Jango has volunteered to trap the beavers free of charge, commission Chairwoman Christine Scott said.
Mind you, that quote is from the chair herself, which means the deep confusion in this committee runs from top to bottom. Are they keeping the beavers? Killing the beavers? Draining the pond? Not draining the pond? No one knows, certainly not the reporter who is not nearly as curious about this whole zen cohen as you might expect. Don’t you love how the flow device installation is a short-term solution but trapping is the real answer? I guess Upton thinks these are the LAST BEAVERS and once they kill off these castor-dinosaurs there will never be any others. Who has the heart to tell them?
The gnarled old trapper. The bright young scientist. The peacemaker who won’t take sides. I can’t help thinking that the commission meeting must look something like this.
