Anne of Green Gables’ homeland is back on the beaver warpath again. They announced a few months back that they planned to kill 150 beavers because moving them wasn’t working. (New ones just moved in. You know, kinda like they’ll do after you kill some.) They got a fair amount of public pushback and now say that they won’t kill quite that many. Of course, the environmentally sound P.E.I loves beavers and recognizes that they do good for the watershed, but they have to kill them, and guess why? Say it with me now.
“To protect the salmon”
The chairman of the wildlife conservation fund, Bruce Smith, reports that dams will interfere with salmon passage.
“(Beavers) do create wetlands but the problem is at the same time they can obstruct salmon migration,” Smith said. “The colony is removed from the problem areas only after a thorough investigation into how destructive the beavers’ presence is in the area and active dams are never touched until the beavers are removed, Smith said. “
Lets just pause to consider that remarkable sentence, shall we? Under the weight of the massive literature which I personally can attest Bruce has been sent he grudgingly admits that beaver dams do some modest good. Then insists the more pressing issue is that they prevent salmon from passing. (lie lie lie) Then quickly assures people that these roadblocks which do ‘some good’ will be preserved anyway until the beavers are killed. A beaver-friend exchanged emails and articles with the powers behind the decision and was told all that compelling research about beavers and salmon didn’t pertain to P.E.I. because Atlantic salmon were different and beavers weren’t native to the island. After a few historical trapping records were noted he conceeded that they might be a “little bit native”, but it didn’t matter because their salmon were still different. Ahh, disabled?
A vocal advocate, Peggy Ruge, has worked with our friends at Fur-bearer Defenders and is advocating those whacky humane methods the kids are all trying these days.
“The methods Ruge is referring to mostly involve treating the trees with either a type of paint or solution that discourages the beavers from chopping them down or a metal type of shield on the base of the tree. Smith said the problem with painting the trees is there are too many and it would take up a great deal of time and money. “In a lot of the sites they are eating alders. You’d have a hard time painting all the alders”
Once again, Bruce provides some remarkable language and truly circular reasoning.
Bruce:”The beavers must be killed because they will eat all the trees
Peggy: “There are a lot of trees.”
Bruce: “There aren’t enough trees.”
Peggy: “Then paint the trees you want to protect”
Bruce: “There are too many trees to paint”
Heidi: “Help me out here, Bruce. Is the problem that there are too many trees? Or too few?”
Bruce: Waaaaaaaaaaaaa. Shut up. Shut up. SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So Prince Edward Island will destroy the winter pools for juvenile salmon and pay taxpayer dollars for a solution they will have to repeat in three years all because they listened to a man whose initials are BS.
(BTW, if you didn’t click on the video, take a moment to marvel at the new skill I just learned of cueing it up to play right where you want. Ahhh the internet!)
