There’s lots to do this morning. First a chance to listen to this very fun beaver podcast From Fur-Bearer defenders radio in Toronto. It starts appropriately with our hero Adrian Nelson and ends with his teacher Mike Callahan. In the middle of this all-boys club we managed to squeeze in a interview with me during my 15 minute lunch hour on a crisis filled-8 patient Thursday. Considering the dramatic circumstances I think I did okay. I regret that he never asked me about Worth A Dam and that I messed up the estimate that historically North America had 40-600 million beaver – but honestly that’s a really stupid estimate so can I be wholly responsible? (I have no idea what scientist counting streams originally hit upon that pretend number but its like writing your Astro Physics thesis saying that the number of starts in the solar system is somewhere “between 1 and an infinity”.)
Anyway it’s a done deal now and you’ll need to study up for your next job, so enjoy. Unfortunately I can’t link to it directly but try following this:
Now that you’re all experts on how and why to live with beavers we have work to do. The ubiquitous TIME magazine has a new issue following the advice from Jim Sterba’s crowd-pleasing book called TIME TO CULL! In it the CULL CULT spouses the profoundly poorly thought-out advice that all we need to do to be happy is kill more beasts – including you-know-whats.
America’s Pest Problem: It’s Time to Cull the Herd
Too many deer, wild pigs, raccoons and beavers can be almost as bad for the animals as too few. This is why communities across the country find themselves forced to grapple with a conundrum. The same environmental sensitivity that brought Bambi back from the brink over the last century now makes it painfully controversial to do what experts say must be done: a bunch of these critters need to be killed.
Your polite 100-word letter to the goes here: I know that the Humane Society, the Grand Canyon Land Trust, and yours truly have already sent ours.
When humans kill one problem we often create another – such as increasingly poisoning rats with rodenticides that unintentionally kill the very raptors that would keep the population in check!
Beavers are a keystone species whose wetlands increase desired fish and game AND whose problems can be easily managed with inexpensive flow devices. My own city installed a one to control flooding 6 years ago, and now because of our safe, beaver-tended wetlands we regularly see otter, steelhead, woodduck and even mink.
If we did our job learning how to live in harmony with nature there would be fewer ‘pests’.
