Yesterday I came across a very important resource that had been quietly available online since November. I’m going to spend the weekend reading through all the really important bits again, but I thought I’d let you know about it too, in care you want to do the same. You will remember that there was a huge change to the law in Oregon about beaver trapping on federally managed public lands and a herculean effort by Suzanne Fouty and others to prevent it. This was prepared for the lawmakers who failed to learn.

 

• This document was originally created for a “Petition to Initiate Rule making to Amend OAR635-050-0070to Permanently Close Commercial and Recreational Beaver Trapping and Hunting on Federally-Managed Public Lands and the Waters that Flows Through These Lands” which was brought before the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commissionon September 24,2020. On November 13,2020, the Commission denied the Petitioners request to initiate rule making despite economic and ecological benefits.

Now I would think it’s amazing that lawmakers would protect the right to kill resources but what indeed do I know. In Tennessee they just made it illegal to promote vaccinations in schools so obviously I don’t understand how these things work. The trapping lobby and the polio lobby must be very strong indeed.

The document was prepared for lawmakers so its VERY VERY EASY to read through with a labeled table of contents and an executive summary. Today we’ll just work through the summary but it’s all TOP notch and I’m sure will be useful in many settings across the country.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 

Beaver, through their dam-building activity, help retain water on the landscape in beaver ponds  and on floodplains, leading to reduced flood risk for landowners immediately downstream,  improved water quality and stream flows, and an expansion of fish and wildlife habitat. Public  utilities which manage reservoirs benefit as improved floodplain connectivity and channel  complexity evens out peak highs and lows in streamflows. Oregonians from across the state  benefit as opportunities for outdoor recreation such as wildlife viewing, fishing, and hunting  expand. Ranchers and farmers benefit as water stored in beaver-created wetlands and behind  beaver ponds provides valuable water during droughts. Cities and towns benefits with  improved water quality and more dependable flows. And in addition to all these benefits, there  is also the creation of carbon capture and store areas as wetlands and wet meadows increase in  size and abundance, a response strategy to climate change that has yet to be assigned a  monetary value.

Are you with me so far? Good!

There are also the large economic benefits related to salmon as it moves through its life cycle. Beaver-created and maintained habitat provide key juvenile coho salmon winter rearing  habitat, decrease stream temperatures, increase channel complexity and habitat connectivity,  and expand riparian habitat all along migration corridors. These improvements along migration  corridors not only enhance the potential for salmon to survive and expand within a changing  climate but provide the same services to migratory birds. Increases in beaver-created habitat  would therefore aid ODFW and to the state in their efforts to achieve conservation goals for  affected species at little to no cost. In addition, there is the chance to prevent the extinction of  salmon due to lack of habitat, something that abundant beavers and their habitat can help  remedy. An extinction event would be a devastating cultural and ecological loss. Assigning a  price tag to such an event should only be considered a point when considering salmon’s  economic, social and cultural importance and value. 

Economic benefits. Now you’re talking. I think the politicians in the room just started to pay attention.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any clearer why we need to save beavers. This helps a lot.

These beaver-generated economic and ecological benefits are currently only future potential  benefits because they require landscapes where there are abundant beaver who are creating  and maintaining abundant beaver habitat. These conditions that do not currently exist in  Oregon because continued beaver trapping and hunting on federally managed public lands  under ODFW furbearer regulations has left abundant suitable beaver habitat unoccupied and  thus abundant ecological and economic benefits unrealized. 

Beaver trapping and hunting prevents Oregonians from receiving these benefits for two major  reasons related to 1) family dynamics and 2) dam maintenance needs. First, the beaver  furbearer season under ODFW furbearer regulations occurs in the winter when the fur quality is  best and thus overlaps the beaver breeding and pregnancy season. Because kits can stay with  their parents up to two years, an entire colony can be trapped/hunted out in a single seaon which eliminates dispersal potential. Even if some beaver remain, there is a lag between birth,  adulthood, dispersal and finding a mate which limits creation and maintenance of habitat and its benefits and future dispersal. Those that remain are vulnerable to trapping and hunting  pressures the following year in addition to all the other mortality causes. Second, removal of  beaver leaves dams unmaintained. As a result, when the dams fail, they are not repaired. The  ponds drain, water tables drop, water quality declines, wetlands and wet meadows begin  converting to drier species and fish and wildlife habitat decreases. The ecological and economic  benefits begin to unravel. Therefore, maintaining family units is key for expanding populations,  successful dam building and maintenance, dispersal, and habitat creation and maintenance. 

Trappers want to kill them just when they want to make a family. And once the family structure is gone all those economic benefits slip away in the undammed water.

This document presents the ways that beaver-created and maintained habitat, though their influences on aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, can generate large market and non-market  benefits from the water and habitat-based changes. These potential future benefits are in the  100s of millions of dollars and would occur at little to no cost to Oregonians. Table 1 compares  these future beaver-driven benefits versus the existing economic benefits gained by trappers  and hunters under ODFW’s furbearer regulations (Table 1). The remaining document provides  information on how those numbers were arrived at and their supporting documentation. 

Alright, Are you paying attention? LIsten up. Beavers make you money. Killing beavers makes a very small amount of people a very little money. But letting them live will help the salmon population which makes the entire state a lot of money. You like money right?

Well would you look at that! Such a little bit of money changes hands when you let the beavers be killed. I’m thinking this is going to be made real clear.

 

Well whadaya know. Now we’re playing chess. Now you’re speaking a language I finally care about. Well not that they paid attention. But still. I think I would have gone with some graphics in the report. Maybe a nice picture about how beaver benefit salmon and some colored bullet points delivered by a group of kindergardners in beaver tails so that it was all filmed on the evening news..

But what do I know?