Sometimes even when you write letters, and call the mayor, and get press coverage, and earn worldwide attention, and seem like you’re winning, and talk to all the professionals and get offers of help, even earn a visit from Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife -sometimes when you do all the right things, it still comes out wrong.
Our friend Anita Utas of Ottawa just reported that Lily and the two kits seen in this video have disappeared. The city says they were “relocated”, but has no details about where they were taken and no one saw it happen. The kits are younger than we would like for a relocation, and Anita fears that they weren’t relocated at all, but trapped, since they all disappeared in a single night. She argues that even if they were relocated it is very unlikely that a single beaver with two young and no shelter and no food cache will survive very long in a new habitat.
You might remember that the city bought themselves some expensive good will recently by bragging about installing a few flow devices in ‘experimental areas where there were no actual beavers’. Here’s Donna Dubrueil’s letter on the subject, published in yesterday’s EMC Kenata.
It’s not just beavers that are being deceived. Residents are as well.
The issue we have is that this provincially-significant wetland is a low-risk site with respect to beaver conflict. Thus, it’s hard not to see this installation as a cynical public relations exercise to divert attention away from the fact that the City of Ottawa still plans to trap beavers in storm water ponds, municipal drains and at the other sites where the majority of the 134 beavers were trapped and killed last year.
If the city really wanted to evaluate the success of water flow devices, why wouldn’t it install them in actual conflict sites?
How else can you evaluate the success of these devices compared to the annual costs of trapping, the very significant labour and equipment costs required to regularly unplug culverts along with infrastructure repairs?
We have some serious questions about this installation from a functional and aesthetic perspective.
It is definitely a monstrosity now but even when the water levels come back and if the beavers dam on the outside fence, it will still do nothing to hide all the metal and piping that has been installed inside the fence.
Our centre had the opportunity to see the beaver deceivers that were recently installed for the city of Cornwall using the latest and most effective design in blending these devices into the natural environment.
It was done free of charge by the Association for the Protection of Furbearing Animals, assisted by Michael Callahan of Beaver Solutions, which has successfully installed more of these devices than anyone in North America.
A similar offer was made to Ottawa but was ignored. Taxpayers should be asking why.
Donna DuBreuilOttawa-Carleton
Wildlife Centre Worth A Dam is so sorry. And feels such compassion and solidarity with your loss. No one in Martinez should fail to understand how close our own beavers came to this fate. It was never enough to have the support of downtown, animal lovers or city-distrusters. It was never enough to have nightly news or to arm ourself with information. It was never enough to have the Sierra club or Audubon or a beaver festival. The truth was always that what saved our beavers were voters. We were three families in Virginia hills or Morello Park away from ending up with only a sad inspiring story for all our efforts. If the city could have gotten away with doing it any other way on god’s green earth, they surely would have.
On days like today, I think of those people I didn’t know and have never heard from again and who had what could be called a ‘passing interest’ in our beavers such that they drove into town on a weeknight and attended that crowded November 7th meeting all those years ago. Since we shop at different stores and support different candidates and belong to different school districts we may never see each other again. But I remember them. And I am grateful.
It’s never the ‘base’ that makes the difference. It’s the margins.
