So the citizens of Oshawa marched into the council meeting last night with signs and banners and stuffed beavers and demanded to keep their aquatic rodents. The experts did what experts do and defended their earlier position and said things like “beaver deceivers don’t work” and that doing nothing was not an option and that lives and property could be lost. (Martinez residents can well imagine because we were there, oh lo those many years ago, and we know EXACTLY how everyone pontificated.) But in the end the council did the right thing. By a bat-squeak of a majority they voted 5-4 to not kill the animals and look for other solutions. Hooray for our team! In the head rush of victory last night Marissa posted about wanting to do a beaver festival, so I would say the beavers of Oshawa have done their “community changing” work handily.
Speaking of our own community, Worth A Dam approached the city council regarding a memorial for mom beaver. Artist Paul Craig did some lovely metal silhouettes of mom and three kits (based on cheryl’s photos and adapted by our graphic artist volunteer, libby) which we would like to hang in memoriam. We had talked about three possible locations because we were worried they might not go for the sheetpile idea. Surprisingly, last night every member of the council said they thought the sheetpile was a lovely idea. They again thanked Worth A Dam for the work. There was smiling as the metal beavers were displayed for view and I was directed to talk to staff about getting them hung.
Go figure!
As if that wasn’t exciting enough, the vet from Lindsay Wildlife came down to meet the beavers last night and got the full show. One little fellow was on the “wrong side” of the dam at 7:30 and wasn’t seen going over during the past hour but might have sneaked by when we were talking to the council. He seemed to be trying to get back over and was blocked by all these sticks and obstacles. We were worried he had forgotten where the gap was, and just about ready to sneak over and line the path with apple peels when he decided to stop fooling around and headed straight for the gap. He obviously knew where it was the whole time, he was just trying to “discover” a new way.
Whew!
So he trotted gamely over and swam about, grabbing some branches. 45 minutes later a second kkit came over from the wrong side!!! Clearly these are BEAVERS WITHOUT BORDERS any more. They go where they please, and we had better go whereever they please too if we’re going to see them!
Do you remember the story last November about the city of Oshawa that said it was going to ‘relocate’ some beavers and the residents found out it was actually killing them? Six Furry Lies (To be fair, I guess death’s a kind of relocation…”the undiscovered country, from whose bourne no traveler returns…“) But it was a pretty bad lie, even as cities go, and there was a lot of red-faced finger-pointing from those who had made it, saying they hadn’t known the trapper was going to kill them.
(I am reminded of the old joke about the man who finds a tiger in his garden and is told by a neighbor to take it to the zoo. The next day the neighbor sees the same tiger in the yard and asks what happened. The man replies, ‘Of course I took it to the zoo like you suggested! We had such a great time that tomorrow I’m taking it to the aquarium!” Ba-dum-dum)
Back to our less charming story. At the time resident Joyce Schnegg had just found out that they hadn’t killed ‘all’ the beavers and there were still four left. (Because even their cruelty is incompetent.) The mayor promised to bring in an expert to find solutions to the problem. The reporter of the story wrote me back and visited the website. It looked like there was going to be a kind of progress. “The arc of environmentalism is long but it bends towards beavers.“
Turns out the ‘expert’ the city brought in was this company, Beacon Environmental, a regular hire of the city of Oshawa and especially dedicated to assessing things like bird hazards at airports. They cashed their check from the taxpayers of Oshawa and said there were three basic options: install a beaver baffler (cutting-edge beaver management when Reagan was president), move the beavers or kill them.
In a June 22 memo to the City, Beacon Environmental said there are three options for beaver management: using a “beaver baffle” — a device that regulates water levels in the pond while allowing beavers to remain — removing the beaver dam, or leaving the status quo. In its report, engineering firm Greck and Associates recommends removing the dam, saying it could “increase peak storm flows, increase downstream flood elevations and reduce storage and discharge capacities.”
A subsequent City report makes no mention of the beaver baffle, instead laying out three possibilities for removing the dam: live trapping and releasing the beavers, lethal trapping or repeatedly breaking apart the dam until the beavers get frustrated and leave. Beacon Environmental ecologist Brian Henshaw says lethal trapping is the most humane route if the City is set on removal.
“We don’t make that recommendation lightly,” he said. “But it’s not fair to move an animal to a place it doesn’t know, where it can’t set up a lodge and get a food store in place before November. That could result in death by starvation.”
Three choices. Guess which one the city picked?
So about 50 residents gathered on the corner to protest the decision to kill the beavers, including 2 council members. One advocated the use of a beaver deceiver (which the paper reported tricked the beavers into thinking the water flowed the opposite direction.) (!) and both shuddered at the traps brought by a resident from the dam to show how they worked. 50 people is a pretty nice number for a beaver protest. Check out their facebook page.
The two protesting council members were able to get actions slowed enough to manage a temporary ‘stay’ on the execution. There will be a ‘last chance ever -and I mean it this time’ meeting next week to discuss options. Clearly the mayor had 8 months to do something productive and used it to apply taxpayer money to find a firm that would say exactly what he wanted to hear and take the blame. (See “Cal Engineering report on the wall behind the beaver lodge for an example) I’m sure Martinez understands that civic decision well enough. Apparently, it’s just a language barrier. When Oshawa said last year that ‘the beavers were going to be relocated’ they didn’t mean they going to be alive when they were relocated, and when the mayor told the press they were looking for solutions they didn’t mean they actuallywanted to solve the problem.
Drop a note to the Mayor and the Council so they know that there are options and lots of reasons to use them.
Remember the beavers that were trapped and lied about in Oshawa Canada? The one’s that “went to live on the farm”? Well they got a pocketful of angry letters and promised they would hire a beaver management consultant next time. Only the trapping of course didn’t get ALL the beavers. There are four left. So “next time” is “this time” and Oshawa is reporting that they are hiring an expert now. No word yet on the name of said expert, but I’ve connected with the reporter and told her to get the name to me when its released so we can say whether the helper is truly helpful or just designed to give the appearance of being helpful.
“We asked the trapper to remove all the traps until further notice,” he said, adding the City is working quickly to find a wildlife expert to weigh in on the situation. “All options are open. We will be looking at ways to remove the beavers and ways we might be able to let them stay.”â?¨ Bill Slute, the City’s manager of parks services, said this isn’t the first time beaver dams have posed potential problems and that humane tactics, such as the use of “beaver bafflers,” have worked well in the past.
“A beaver baffler looks like a sewer pipe, it runs through the dam and helps manage the water level to control negative impact on roads, or drainage or nearby houses,” he said. “They have been effective for us in the past but that doesn’t mean they’re always the right solution.”â?¨ Mr. Slute hasn’t been to the Goodman Creek site and can’t say whether a beaver baffler would work at that location.
Wow. A sudden recognition that water problems can be solved by a few strategic investments. I guess this pretty much solves the problem. Any city that can install a baffler or flow device surely knows how to be solution oriented. Game over. Unless….oh….
He said sometimes population control is just as important as water level management, noting too many beavers in one area can cause significant tree damage and the number of lodges and dams can get out of hand.
Ahhhh, the second chorus of the classic beaver killing refrain. Hum this to the tune of “She’ll be comin’ round the mountain” Verse one of course is
They’ll be flooding in our city, if they stay if they stay
They’ll be flooding in our city if they stay.
They’ll be flooding in our city
And it will not be pretty
They’ll be flooding in our city if they stay
It is all of the song you usually need to hear before the residents agree to hire an executioner. Sometimes verse two is necessary
They will eat up all our Aspen if they stay if they stay
Yes they’ll eat up all our Aspen if they stay
Oh they’ll eat up all our Aspen
With their chewin’ and their graspin’
Oh they’ll eat up all our Aspen if they stay.
” (or willow, or poplar or whatever) But, in those very rare situations where the residents insist on building a flow device to take care of part I and wrapping trees to take care of part II, then you get verse three. And this threat usually frightens people into allowing them to be killed.
Oh they’ll breed like little rodents if they stay, if they stay
Yes they’ll breed like little rodents if they stay
Oh they’ll breed like rats and rabbits
And destroy us with their habits
Oh they’ll breed like little rodents if they stay
Never mind that beavers are monogamous, and that the female can get pregnant for exactly 12-24 hours once a year, or that they are territorial so that the offspring must move at least four miles away to start his own life. But the fear of beavers taking over is always a good one to toss around. Just you wait. When they find out that population explosion isn’t the great terror either, they’ll start on verse four.
Oh they’ll interfere with salmon if they stay if they stay
Yes they’ll interfere with salmon if they stay
With their building and their dammin’
They’ll block the moves of salmon
Oh they’ll interfere with salmon if they stay
Our city is working on verse fourteen…but I’m sure there’s more.
Last week, directly after writing about the missing beaver dam in Maryland, I was sent a similar article about some residents who were worried about their beavers in Oshawa, Ontario. I read the story with interest but didn’t write about it because it I had just done the Maryland piece and suddenly got overwhelmed with massive bird deliveries from Washington. Yesterday I saw another piece from Oshawa, reminding me the consequences of ignoring beaver news.
City officials say they didn’t know until it was too late.
Six beavers that City of Oshawa staff said were “relocated” because their dams were obstructing water flow in Goodman Creak, were actually killed.
City staff did not initially respond to requests for comment but a statement released by the City’s communications department on Oct. 22 said a licensed trapper was working to “relocate” six beavers, because their dams were obstructing the creek, which could lead to flooding in area homes.
“It was only after enquiries were made, that we found out they were not removed alive,” he said. “In retrospect, we should have made more enquiries at the beginning.” When the City hires contractors, such as the trapper used in this situation, Mr. Bertoia said there is the assumption they are trained professionals who are regulated by the relevant laws. For that reason, he said the City didn’t give specific instructions to the trapper, or ask questions about what was being done with the animals.
Yes your honor, I did pay 300,000 to a Mr ‘Knuckles’ who later took out my wife, but I honestly thought he was just going to bring her back to her mothers! I didn’t know he was going to kill her! And when I called all her friends back and said she’d be away for a few months, I wasn’t lying. She really will be!
Residents who live near the creek are outraged.
“Everybody has lied all the way down the line with this nonsense about relocating them,” said Joyce Schnegg, who confronted the trapper when she first spotted him in the creek. “I begged (City staff) to save them, to find a compromise, but no one listened. I feel terrible that I wasn’t able to do more to save them.”
Do you remember that puppy you got from the pound when you were in third grade? The one that chewed your dad’s brief case and ate up all your mom’s daisies in the front yard? You had showed him to all your friends and named him “Patches”? Then you came home from school one day and the puppy didn’t greet you and mom and dad told you it went to live on “the farm”?
Apparently beavers live there too.
First the outrage. The very apt city slogan for Oshawa is “Prepare to be amazed“. And this is truly amazing. It is unfathomable to me that this was allowed to happen and that the city staff was allowed to lie about it for seven days. Yes the properties may have been in real danger, and the city may have had the responsibility to act, but killing six beavers is a prehistoric solution in a modern age. Ten minutes on the internet or the phone would have told you that there are other ways to solve these problems, protect the city interests, promote the communities’ good faith, and preserve the animals well-being. Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions is 8 hours away, for instance. Skip Lisle of Beaver Deceivers International is 7 hours away. A simple flow device installed at the dam could have controlled water height and allowed your beavers to continue to contribute to the environment. Instead you hired trappers in wetsuits to exterminate a family, exposed your city to negative media and alienated the trust of your entire community.
Oshawa Mayor John Gray said City staff did the right thing by being proactive about potential flooding.
“We all love animals, but sometimes beavers in an urban setting just don’t work,” he said. “Would my preference have been relocation? Yes. But a happily ever after isn’t always possible. If the beavers were moved to another location, we could have another municipality facing the same problem.”
The mind reels. The Jaw drops. Is it just me or is it startling to see how enormously similar this crop of civic liars are to our own Bay Area brand? And this is 3000 miles away in another country! And the mayor still speaks the universal language of pants-on-fire.
After the outrage is enormous guilt that I didn’t write about this story earlier after reading this. Probably the beavers wouldn’t be any more alive, but its sad to think that shining greater light on the issue might have helped. The residents of Oshawa should take this whole sorry episode as a reminder that their elected leaders cheerfully take their taxes and just as cheerfully lie to them about what they spend them on. We should all pay attention, and Oshawa, rest assured, you have definitely amazed.
Whoever said that the beavers were relocated should lose their job. Mr. Gray, you should know that if he lies about beavers in the watershed today, he will be lying about pesticides in the playgrounds tomorrow. Can you afford another mistake like this?
If you would like to send Mayor Gray your thoughts, you can reach him here,
The article also quotes Stan Bertoia, the city’s commissioner of community services. Hiring trappers to kill beavers is probably not part of community services, per se, but placating the outraged citizens must be. I don’t envy Mr. Bertoia. If you want to go straight to the-decision making source, you can also write the city manager, Bob Dunigan.
I’m just waiting for the law suit that follows when these residents start missing the bird, otter and fish population.
