What’s a fellow to do?

Let’s say (and why not?) that you were a strapping young lad on the East Coast with a comfortable government job counting the problems wildlife cause and instructing people to kill beavers, coyotes and starlings, (to name a few). You go to meetings, do some field work, carry a firearm, make eyes at the more attractive interns and go out after work for a cold one with your friends. Considering you stopped college after the bachelor’s you make pretty decent money. You can’t complain. Life is good.

You stop working for US FWS in 2008, I’m assuming because the economy tanks and suddenly Uncle Sam isn’t such a reliable employer anymore. I’m guessing you were laid off and the promised pension you were counting on starts to dissolve like cotton candy. You’re on your own, without work or potential work, and a critical voice might say your skill set could barely fill up a cocktail napkin. What do you do?

Now this is all speculation here, but I’m guessing you do what you always did. You kill beavers, of course! Only for some strange reason business in Massachusetts isn’t what it once was. Seems folks aren’t hiring you to kill beavers the way you expected them too. Even though your watershed experience at FWS connected you with all the right folk. It can’t be your fault. It can’t be that they’re hiring someone else to do that work.

IT MUST BE THE ANIMAL-LOVERS!!!!!!!!

See, back when you were graduating your state passed a law that said basically that an animal’s right to die without pain and torture was more important than a trappers right not to be slightly inconvenienced. Bummer. Trapping was of course still allowed – just not with the old tools unless there was some kind of imagined threat involved to human welfare, or roads, or water supplies, (well – it was mostly still allowed but not as allowed as it used to be). As a former employee for US FWS you knew that meant only one thing, crazy breeding wildlife with beavers everywhere and no work for you.

You’re 42, a bright lad, and not one to give up easily. You start a club to lobby politicians to go back to the old ways! You have paid close attention to the Bush administration’s talent for “opposite naming” (Clean water act, for example). It was good enough for the president so you employ the same technique for your club and choose a name that implies stewardship and animal husbandry, toying briefly with the intention of becoming a licensed non-profit.

Committee for Responsible Wildlife Management

(Note – you could have used Responsible Animal Management instead of Wildlife, but then your acronym would have been CRAM and that’s problematic – you’re no fool.)

So CRWM pleads and pushes and lobbies and wheedles and deals and nudges the trapping issue into the legislative chamber. And those crazy animal lovers at MSPCA keep pushing back with their videos and letter whining. You take your skill for turning a phrase on its head and write a few articles on maintaining animal welfare through careful trapping, highway workers and city employees (who long for nothing more than to appear to care about wildlife while still killing it when it gets in their way) eat it up. You’re a hero. Politicians flock to you. You are at the state house more often than Tip O’Neil.

You come “this close” to overturning the law each time, but you never give up. Now you’re at it again with HB2001 which basically inserts text into the old bill saying that no one can use those bad traps except you and your friends and everyone who asks.

The above provision shall not apply to the use of prohibited devices by federal and state departments of health, wildlife management agencies, or divisions or municipal boards of health for the purpose of protection from threats to human health and safety or for the management of furbearing wildlife during their established regulated seasons. The uses of prohibited devices are subject to the regulations and restrictions promulgated by the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife.

This time you may have found the right girl for the job – (I’ve been told women are always easier to convince that their poodles are in danger if strong trappers don’t get the bad coyotes). Representative Anne Gobi is a democrat and the chair of the joint committee on natural resources and agriculture. This comes to the floor soon, and you can bet you’ll be there, making faces at the Bunny-Huggers, shaking heads and scaring babies.

This is certain to happen, its practically a done deal – unless – unless – unless – one of those crazy animal people get in your way. Unless someone gets the ear of Anne before you do and lets the BIG OL’ SECRET cat outta the bag. As long as no one passes it along, you’re home free. What a are the odds? The white-hats keep marching to the capital but they never say anything but “be nice” and “animals are people too”.

They never say that it’s a lie.

A Big Lie.

They never say that the only reason you’re there in the first place is because you want a job.

They never say that a simple meta-analysis comparing news articles about beavers in MA to four other states of similar size and water acreage without trapping bans would prove that there are no more beavers or beaver complaints than there have ever been since 1996. No more than there are in states where they kill them however they like, anyway, considering normal population growth. The truth is that the change in law didn’t mean that folks stopped killing beavers.

It just mean that they stopped paying trappers to do it.

Like the landscaper whose leaf blower runs out of gas, the brick layer who drops his trowl, or the widow who relies on her trusty vibrator: they simply take matters into their own hands.

It’s a good thing no one is going to tell Anne before this bill comes to the floor. Soon it will pass and the whole “be nice to beavers” BS will be over. Then you can go back to paid work, instead of begging for crumbs on the internet. Heck maybe you can even prevent laws like this from getting any traction in other areas. Then you can work all over the East Coast!

And if it doesn’t pan out, don’t worry. You can always move to California. They let you kill beavers any old way out here.

So Close and Yet So Far…

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Uncategorized, Who's Killing Beavers Now? October 24, 2010

A beaver dam at the Carriagetown Marketplace in Amesbury.Jim Vaiknoras/Staff

Hotel plan faces unusual foe in beavers

by: Lynne Hendricks

It’s a rainy sunday so lets go to Amesbury, Massachusetts where a fine developer known as the “True Homestead Partnership” wants to build a Hampton Inn near a shopping mall. Sounds delightful. Problem is there are some beavers living in a drainage ditch near the mall and the owners of the complex have not thought them to be a problem. They’re making one of those dastardly ponds and the water is interfearing with their building plans.

Their trouble is not from the Planning Board or Conservation Commission, which are currently reviewing the plan. It’s not from angry neighbors — at least not the kind that walk on two legs. It’s coming from a family of beavers living next door. The beavers live on land owned by Carriagetown Marketplace LLC, 15 acres that encompasses Stop and Shop and a number of retailers. It’s the plan of developers True Homestead Partners to use the parcel of land east of the marketplace for the hotel, a 10,000-square-foot retail complex and parking. But working within the confines of their 2.5 acre site, the beaver-made swamp may make it difficult to accomplish that. Mayor Thatcher Kezer said the town’s hands are tied when it comes to the nesting family. “Unless we determine it’s a public health hazard, it has to be the landowners who bring it forward,” Kezer said.

Well now that’s the start of exciting and unfolding drama. Lets get the popcorn. You’ll want to replay this every Christmas. Remember that Massachusetts is a state where body crushing traps are outlawed unless certain conditions are met. The trappers association is constantly whining about how hard it is to kill beavers now and twisting arms in the statehouse to get the law overturned. The argument in this article seems to be that the city can’t do anything unless public safety is at risk. That isn’t true. They could hire a trapper to use the woefully inconvenient and body-pampering traps if they wanted to. The beavers would be just as dead at the end of it. So what gives?

Does Kezer want to foce a big favor from Homestead before he’s willing to kill some beavers? Did someone from Carriagetown have a bad breakup with someone from Homestead? Does everybody in Amesbury love beavers? Or is there nobody willing to go in the water this time of year? I wrote the Mayor, the spokeswoman from Audubon and the paper that Beaver Solutions are waiting just two hours away. I guess I’m not complaining that everyones throwing up their hands and saying we can’t trap. It’s just confusing. Trust me it gets worse

It is illegal to tear open or disturb an active beaver dam unless one obtains a permit, which isn’t easy to obtain. But while the beaver’s mass of bundled sticks and mud can’t be destroyed, the law allows landowners some options. Unfortunately for the animals, those options for the most part involve killing them. There’s only one method that provides a win-win for the beaver and developer. Water-level control devices, for instance, make the beaver habitat less desirable, as long as one has a permit. The theory behind the measures is to alter the dam in a way that can’t be fixed by the animals, and hence ultimately persuades the critters to move on. But this option can be tricky since beavers are attuned to the sounds of water escaping their dam and by instinct will move quickly to shore up any weaknesses in their home. Other than that, the law does not provide any other means of relocating the animals.

Did you get that? This article begins with a flourish worthy of the 1812 overature. There’s only one method that provides a win-win for the beaver and the developer. WATER CONTROL DEvICES!!!!!!!!!Wow I got all excited and for a minute there thought I was in love. The next sentence changed everthing, as we dropped from 1812 overture to ‘theme from Hee-Haw“. Flow devices”Make the beaver habitat less desirable. and ultimately persuade the critters to move on”. Is there a mark on my forehead? I keep slapping it when I read STUPID articles. Ahhh Lynne, you were this close.

I’m not sure where you got that misinformation from. Did Mr. Kezer tell you that water control devices make beavers go away? Did Ms. Rines from Audubon? Did you read it on a cereal box? Just so you know. If flow devices made beavers move on, they would be a complete waste of time and a wasted investment. Because new beavers would just move in. Just like when you trap. The point of flow devices is to preserve the conditions that the humans need (lower dam, unblocked culvert) in such a way that the beavers can tolerate it. Then they stay in the area and mark the territory and keep any other beavers from moving in.

Oh and Lynne? beavers do walk on their hind legs.

That’s mom carrying mud and sticks onto the old lodge, BTW. This footage was shot by Moses Silva about two years ago Ahh mom, we miss you. Nice to see you again.

Some of our lucky viewers might notice a new image in your menu bar and bookmark. I figured out yesterday how to do the favicon we used to have on the old site, but I thought the logo was a little mishapen so I tried this instead. It may take a while to show on your site, but it should eventually. This is a silhouette designed by Libby Corliss based on a photo taken by Cheryl Reynold. Thanks ladies!

License to Kill (Easier)

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver News, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Massachusetts Trapping Law, Who's Killing Beavers Now? October 24, 2010

Out in Massachusetts the disgruntled folk from the Committee for Resposible Wildlife Management are headed to a lazy man’s victory. The bill making it easier to circumvent humane standards for killing beavers has been approved by the governor and is in its final stages before passage. Just remember, where beavers are concerned the problems rarely have anything to do with reason. (Martinez knows that fairly well through first hand experience.) The original law requiring humane traps passed in the commonwealth back in 1996. It included a list of 9 lengthy exceptions to the rule under which traditional trapping could still be used. At that time, Clinton was president, the economy was booming, and everybody knew somebody that was doing a start-up.

I guess times really do change.