Tag: Donna DuBreuille

OTTAWA ISN’T ANY SMARTER YET

heidi08 Beavers June 12, 2024

Do you think it might suffer from a rare form of intelligence immunity?Ontario is going to be nice to wildlife. Except for beavers. Beavers are a pain in the aspen. They hate themselves some beavers.

Beavers left unprotected by new wildlife strategy, says advocate

The City of Ottawa is updating its wildlife management strategy to better handle human-wildlife interactions and protect natural habitats — but the lack of big changes to how beavers are dealt with could prove controversial.

The revised strategy includes measures such as increased public education, enhanced monitoring of wildlife diseases, and new protocols for encounters with large mammals.

Specific changes include partnerships with wildlife organizations and the creation of a “wildlife resource specialist” position to lead these efforts.

But it’s beaver management that’s likely going to be the “most contentious piece” of the report, said Alta Vista Coun. Marty Carr, the vice-chair of the city’s environment and climate change committee.

Wait, let me guess. Does your new beaver policy involve a conibear trap and a shovel?

Yeah we know that one.

Wildlife advocates have had long-standing issues with how reliant the city is on using lethal methods to deal with troublesome beavers. When the presence or actions of an animal pose a risk to public health and safety, the city’s service providers can use lethal trapping.

According to the proposed new wildlife strategy, the city will “maintain current beaver management solutions in municipal drains and stormwater systems and evaluate beaver management practices in other locations.”

“Beaver management requests are assessed using a risk-based approach on a case-by-case basis, with beaver trapping considered as a last resort,” the report says.

Beavers are a “complex issue,” Carr said, as their dams can contribute to flooding, negatively impact the city’s stormwater infrastructure and obstruct city drains and culverts. Ottawa’s approach to handling beavers is significantly influenced by the Provincial Drainage Act, Carr said.

The law requires municipalities to keep drainage systems working properly to prevent flooding and protect both farmland and infrastructure.The city employs trappers licensed by Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources as a flood control measure, and the ministry recommends lethal trapping, according to the city’s website.

By ‘COMPLEX ISSUE’ er mean something we want to kill without drawing unwanted media attention. GET IT?

“We are hampered by provincial legislation in terms of stopping [how we trap] beavers,” Carr said.

“I’m hopeful that the new position of the wildlife resource officer … will be able to assist in making some recommendations and work with organizations like the Ottawa-Carleton Wildlife Centre.”

Yup. Our hands are tied. We WOULD save beavers by wrapping trees and installing flow devices you know, but that darned drainage law just makes that impossible. Shoot!

I’m so old I remember when we first introduced the centre to flow devices and made friends with Donna.

Donna DuBreuil, the president of the centre, described the city’s approach to beaver management as “draconian.”

DuBreuil said she advocates for a preventative approach that would keep beavers “on the landscape” by installing flow devices, which are currently being used in cities across North America.

- Wildlife spotted in unusual areas as flood waters push creatures out of homes

The devices prevent flooding, DuBreuil said, while also allowing beavers to continue providing benefits to the environment like preserving and enhancing wetlands.

“Here we are, the nation’s capital, still doing something that shouldn’t have been done for the last 50 years,” she added.

I would think that if a city had to learn the same lesson OVER AND OVER again it would eventually get smarter. Wouldn’t you?

Apparently not so much.

Lip Service with a Smile

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Who's Killing Beavers Now? May 18, 2013

Once upon a time, in a little suburb of Ottawa, some beavers were discovered in a storm water pond near an apartment building. They weren’t very far from artist Anita Utas home, and she started to take an interest in them. When the city said the beavers would be killed she called some friends and plenty of people spoke out against it. Alarmed by the media coverage and the thousand emails, the mayor backed down, posed for this photo with the giant beaver, and Anita and her friends were heroes. Ottawa said it was going to work with wildlife interests to formulate a comprehensive wildlife plan. And there was much rejoicing!

Fast forward to 2012, when the wildlife groups had been so excited to be involved, became frustrated at their complete helplessness and marginalization on the committee and publicly resigned, saying “We aren’t giving up a seat at the table. There is no ‘table’.” A few months later, on Canada day when everyone was on vacation, the city goons ripped out the beaver lodge, swearing after objections that they had done no harm because the beavers had moved on.

Except the next day Anita filmed a mother beaver with two tiny kits, and since they had no lodge for protection they were spending the day breast feeding in a bush. And the father beaver was never ever seen again. After insisting that there were no beavers there, and then that if they were there they had never been harmed, they said the beavers must be relocated – because STORMWATER. Ever flexible and pragmatic, the white hats advocated a wildlife sanctuary that had agreed to take them. But the city insisted it would handle it themselves, and that no media or witness should be allowed to see it, but ‘just trust us – it will be fine’.

So Lily and her two kits were ‘disappeared’. And then miraculously, 90 days later video was sent to Anita of an adult beaver and a much older yearling! A note was attached explaining the other kit had lived fine, but had just dived and wasn’t visible at the moment, but see? They said. Everything turned out fine! You worried for nothing you silly goose-lover! The city waited for public attention to turn back to J-walking or childcare like it always did.

It was pointed out that unless the city had relocated those beavers by way of a time machine, there was no way in heaven or earth that those beavers were the same ones they moved. And the people who were mad before got mad again. And the people who had lied before lied again. I made a video of the event set to the soundtrack of just Paul Simon’s “Lie, Lie Lie” from the end of the Boxer, but Youtube, in its infinite copyright wisdom, took it away. If you know it, you might hum along as you watch.

Are you still with me? I know that’s a lot of back story to cover. One of the advantages of just putting down layers of evil and bullshit on top of each other over and over again, is that the story gets too long to even tell in the media. And because your story becomes too complicated to report on, the media talks about some one else’s simpler crime. Never mind, this is the Martinez Beavers website. We know all about complicated lies. I’ll get to the point.

This week, the never-awaited pretend Wildlife strategy Plan has finally been released!

Wildlife plan shows Ottawa a “dinosaur” in species protection, says group

Beavers, turkeys and coyotes will still be killed at the hands of the city despite 11 recommendations laid out in a draft wildlife management strategy early this week, charged a local conservation group, Wednesday.

“Here’s Ottawa continuing to kill the majority of beavers,” said Donna DuBreuil, president of the Ottawa-Carleton Wildlife Centre.

DuBreuil, who is also a spokesperson for the Ontario Wildlife Coalition, walked away from a working group on the document last September after more than a year passed without a stakeholder’s meeting.

“There was no support from the other agencies,” she said. “They have fought for years any progress.” The policy is now up on the city’s website for public consultation.

Here I did the heavy lifting for you. Maybe you have something to say about this excerpt?

With respect to beavers, opportunities appear to exist for the employment of “beaver deceivers” to protect some infrastructure (especially road and rail culverts), with associated ecosystem benefits and the potential for long-term maintenance cost savings. Seven beaver deceiver demonstrations sites have been established by the City. However, the City can find no precedent or support for the use of beaver deceivers in engineered stormwater management ponds, and the City’s stormwater engineers have concluded that they may interfere with the performance and maintenance of those facilities.

Because, you know, storm water is SO different from the other kind of water. And those 5 photos sent to us by that guy Mike Callahan of installations in storm water ponds could have been photo shopped. He’s not even Canadian. And what kind of name is ‘Beaver Solutions‘ anyway? There’s only one solution to beavers. And everyone knows it.

So help our Canadian friends and send your comments about how flow devices work and beavers create habitat HERE. As part of the plan they’re proposing hiring a 100,000 dollar a year wildlife biologist to handle these issues in the future. Smart thinking. Get an expert on staff to do it.

We wouldn’t want to put elected officials in voter jeopardy, right?

Mystery Solved!

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational January 14, 2013

An illustrated talk about Castor Canadensis, better known as the Canadian beaver, will launch the six-week Nature in the City series Tuesday at the Wolf Performance Hall in downtown London. Learn about this iconic symbol of history and industry that is both admired and scorned. (QMI Agency)

Urban beavers subject of series opener

The eighth incarnation of the hugely popular Nature in the City speaker series kicks off on Tuesday at the Central Library’s Wolf Performance Hall in downtown London. Nature London and the London Public Library are co-sponsors.

Through six illustrated talks, Londoners again have an opportunity to learn about interesting aspects of our urban habitats. However, too often we simply see streets, bricks and mortar within the city limits there is a surprising diversity of spaces, plants, and animals.

Tuesday’s presentation will be on the theme of urban beavers. Since these animals are largely nocturnal, we see more evidence of beavers’ presence than the animals themselves.While many admire this industrious emblem of Canada, others decry North America’s largest rodent. Outdoor educator Tom Purdy will talk about how these adaptable animals cope within London.

While I have made every possible human effort to establish first contact with Tom, I’ve had about as much luck as SETI so far. The good news is that I contacted Donna Dubreuil of the Ottawa-Carleton Wildlife Centre and she put me in touch with ‘boots on the ground’ in his area, so to speak. This morning, she sent this:

London Free Press: Gillespies’ article this morning is on Tom Purdy’s lecture tomorrow. In the past, Gillespie has been known to be anti-beaver (largely from info he received from a local trapper.) Gillespie quotes Purdy saying that trapping is the last resort when dealing with beaver problems. He states that beaver deceivers and baffles allow us to peacefully coexist with this amazing animal. The article also references Stanton Drain…

And then she sent the article which contains this. (God, I love having ‘boots on the ground…)

Although some local environmentalists opposed moving the beavers, those animals were moved to the Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary in Rosseau, near Parry Sound, for the winter and will be transferred to the Munsee-Delaware First Nation reserve this spring.

Beavers can ignite strong emotions. I learned that about two years ago when I wrote a column about a licensed trapper who has removed beavers — in lethal fashion — for both private landowners and the City of London for nearly 20 years.

After writing about the trapper, I received a number of angry letters and e-mails, including one from a young former Londoner who, borrowing a page from my description of the lethal beaver traps, wrote that she’d like to see me “trap yourself and find out how it feels to have your vertebrae crushed slowly and painfully while you slip into an irreversible state of unconsciousness.”

Well, that is fairly colorful. Do beavers provoke strong emotions? To be honest, for me ‘beavers‘ don’t provoke nearly as strong emotions as ‘stubborn ignorance’, ‘willful dishonesty’ and ‘puposeful cruelty’ do. But, hey that’s just me. The article also says this:

Although Purdy acknowledges that intervention is warranted in some situations, he says in most cases we can coexist with the flat-tailed chewer. “(Trapping) should be a last resort,” he says. “There are lots of other strategies that should be tried first.”

Purdy points out that beaver dams, which can often cause damaging flooding, can be circumvented by “beaver baffles” or “beaver deceivers.” These devices feature underwater pipes that alleviate flooding while still preserving the dam, which beavers use to maintain a safe watery route to food.

Tom! Buddy! Old pal! Ever think about starting a beaver festival in London?

Sawdust everywhere…

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Who's Killing Beavers Now? November 1, 2012

Well something like beaver-scat appears to be hitting the proverbial fan. I got a call yesterday from Donna Dubreuille of Ottawa-Carlton wildlife centre in Canada who said she had just issued a press release about the shadowy fate of Lily and her two kits, the beavers living in Paul Lindsay pond in Stittsville, just outside of Ottawa. You will remember that they were slated to be killed, then saved by very heroic and loud protests for a summer, only to find their lodge ripped out by city staff on the national holiday weekend. Staff later assured local advocates that there were no beavers living there, and no beavers using that lodge, and the media was mostly convinced until Anita posted footage of the most adorable (and tiny) beaver kits that I have ever seen, and then photographed them nursing during the day with mom under a bush because they had no shelter.

You might remember that the mayor agreed to form a wildlife task force to find new ways of dealing with animals in the city and Donna and others were invited to be involved. Meanwhile myself and Mike Callahan exchanged countless emails with staff about flow devices and how they could work in storm water ponds. The city even hired flow device founding father Michel Leclare to build some much-proclaimed flow devices in experimental places where it turned out no beavers were actually living.

All of which is to say that the strategy of Ottawa under the leadership of Mayor Watson is a bifurcated path of transparency and deceit, where they ostentatiously appear to be doing the right thing, and the simultaneously continue merrily on their destructive course doing what they wanted all along. Apparently they have changed their weighty motto from Ut Incepit Fidelis Sic Permanet (loyal, she remains) to the more stream-lined Mirus Illuc! (“Look! Over there!”).

Well, it’s not working too well with the locals. Donna and her wildlife counterparts resigned from the ‘pretend wildlife council’ and released a press release yesterday about the video passed off to Anita as the release of Lily and her kits.

Wildlife group accuses Ottawa of releasing fake beaver video

Not since accusations that the moon landing was faked has a video caused such controversy.

A local wildlife group accused the city Wednesday of duping them with footage said to show the relocation and release of three beavers that became the cause celebre of a Stittsville community this summer.

“We’re saying this video proves nothing, but raises more concerns about what happened to the beavers,” said Donna DuBreuil, President of the Ottawa-Carleton Wildlife Centre, of footage released by the city to the group in early October. “This is not a video of an adult and a kit. These are not the Paul Lindsay Park beavers.”

So what did Mayor Watson & the City of Ottawa do with Lily theBeaver & Her Babies? November 1, 2012

CFN -Community members and wildlife organizations that opposed the relocation of a family of beavers, Lily and her two kits, from a Stittsville stormwater pond by the city of Ottawa in early September are up in arms.

Although Mayor Jim Watson and Deputy City Manager, Steve Kanellakos, attempted to portray the relocation at the time as a good thing for the beavers, no members of the media or the public were allowed to witness it.

Now, after much pressure, the city finally released a video last week that was supposed to reassure residents that the beavers had actually been released. Instead, it has fuelled concern and cynicism that the beavers may have in fact met a very different end.

The city’s video is purported to show the mother beaver with one of her kits in the water following release, indicating the other kit had dived under water.

OTTAWA BEAVER UPDATE

Is it a lie?

In a press release issued today community members who have championed the protection of a beaver family in the Stittsville (Ottawa, Ontario) region are condemning the government for what they perceive to be a deliberate attempt to hide the truth. The story is now gaining international attention as a popular California advocacy group has joined the ranks against the local government in Ottawa.

This scathing release comes only weeks after multiple conservation, wildlife and environmental groups walked away from the table with city planners when it was made clear – through inaction – that the groups were merely table settings and not part of the discussion.

Below is the release issued, along with links to the videos which purportedly show the beavers finding their new home.

Mind you all of these reports mention the ‘wildlife group from California” and the video they released arguing that beavers couldn’t possibly grown so big in such a short time. Gulp. One thing’s for sure, the city’s beaver smarts are definately not Worth A Dam.

I’m thinking it hath made a few people mad. I guess it’s safe to say I’m not going to receive an invitation from the mayor to visit Ottawa any time soon.

Resignation

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Who's Killing Beavers Now? September 14, 2012

I received an email this morning from Donna Dubreuil of the Ottawa-Carlton Wildlife Centre that the wildlife groups working with the city of Ottawa on a ‘wildlife plan’ have resigned and asked that their names not be included in the report.

WILDLIFE ORGANIZATIONS RESIGN FROM OTTAWA’S WILDLIFE STRATEGY WORKING GROUP

Wednesday, September 12, 2012: Wildlife organizations, appointed to help develop a Wildlife Strategy for Ottawa, have resigned in frustration, requesting that their organizations’ names be removed from any final document produced by the city.

Donna DuBreuil, president of the Ottawa-Carleton Wildlife Centre (OCWC) said “we regret having to make this decision because we were instrumental in bringing the proposal for a progressive Wildlife Strategy forward to Council. However, we cannot endorse the Wildlife Strategy Report because it will not change the very negative climate for wildlife in Ottawa and, in fact, further entrench outdated attitudes”.

Liz White, spokesperson for the Ontario Wildlife Coalition (OWC) and a member of the Wildlife Strategy Working Group, has also submitted her organization’s resignation. “I have very serious concerns not only with the substance of the report but the process used. It seems the community organizations were simply used as window dressing and that staff had never any intention of implementing real changes to the status quo, explaining why the process was dragged out for two and a half years,” said White.

The development of a Wildlife Strategy was prompted by Ottawa residents who were angry and embarrassed with the City’s long-standing approach to wildlife in the Nation’s Capital that included shooting moose, trapping beavers and coyotes and gassing groundhogs in neighbourhood parks.

Wow. I am so loathe to have wildlife folks ever ‘leave the table’ because it takes so much work to even be invited to the table in the first place, and almost any influence is better than no influence, but when i read this I understood. I remembered poignantly when our own city was determined to install sheetpile through the beavers lodge and invited me to be on a “Citizen oversight” committee, that couldn’t advise, halt, influence, delay or affect the work in anyway.

I declined.

Donna and Liz outline their concerns clearly:

the on-going trapping and killing of beavers throughout the city
the labelling of wildlife as “nuisances”
the inclusion of lethal trapping or live trapping in combination with euthanasia as options for dealing with “nuisance” wildlife
a large mammal response that remains secretive and unaccountable to the public
demonstration projects to evaluate flow devices where there is no beaver, little water and no
risk and, even if there were, the devices installed have been designed to fail
education and outreach projects that will provide little benefit to the majority of Ottawa residents
the recommendation for the hiring of a Wildlife Biologist at a cost of $100,000 annually to support these questionable endeavours

You can go read the whole thing here, including the secret Rural plan for continuing to kill wildlife that city staff has jokingly referred to as the “Trapper’s Manifesto”. The decision merited nice response from the media which hopefully will continue to shine some uncomfortable light on this issue.