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?
