It’s time to honor the beaver trapper again, at least somebody thinks it is. This glitzy article out of Canada at least has the presence of mind to pose it as a question. And to interview Leslie Fox of Fur-bearer Defenders also. I guess that’s a little progress in 150 years? It also features some interactive graphics and a 360 video of trapping a beaver because there’s no end to the money HBC will spend glorifying the sport, apparently.

The title of this glitzy article is too clever by half. Not the trappers life of course…the trap line. Get it?

Life on the line

Are fur trappers stuck in the past or a vital piece of Canada’s living heritage?

“That’s good, that’s what we need,” Henschell answers, as Kotowich heaves up a water-logged beaver that’s been dead since the trap snapped shut. The pudgy creature thuds on the ice. Like generations of fur-bearing animals before it, this buck-toothed symbol of Canadian sovereignty met its end in a trap.

With 100 years of experience between them, Henschell and Kotowich say they trap because they love the wilderness and its solitude. They trap to connect with something powerful and elusive that they feel some smartphone-addicted young people are losing sight of in the internet age.

“It’s like going home,” says Henschell, who comes from a family of trappers and says he was conceived in a remote log cabin in the fall of 1938, not long after his parents married.

Canada marks 150 years of nationhood on July 1, 2017. Much of what led to the country’s birth revolved around the trapping and trading of furs, but while the commerce and conflicts of the trade are central to Canada’s history, there is pressure to envision a future without fur.

Some argue there’s no longer a need for the industry.

Lesley Fox, the B.C.-based executive director of the Association for the Protection of Fur-Bearing Animals, says Canada’s historic connection to the fur trade makes it difficult to challenge the industry.

“There is a lot of nostalgia, a lot of Canadiana, and the media hypes that up,” she says.”The modern-day fur trade is very, very different than the fur trade I think we know from our history books.”

The fur trade is inherently cruel and the range of affordable synthetic alternatives have rendered wild fur unnecessary, Fox says.

Sales by the global fur farm industry dwarf those of the wild fur trade year over year; Fox says that illustrates how trapping in 2017 is akin to a frivolous leisure activity like trophy hunting.

“There is a lot of talk about ‘living off the land,’ ‘stewards of the land,’ the word Indigenous gets thrown around a lot, ‘people’s livelihoods,’ and in my opinion that’s all rhetoric. It’s actually not true,” she says.

The province also helped pay for eight “beaver deceivers” — one of several non-lethal flow devices to prevent beaver damming — last year. Animal rights activist Fox says the non-lethal methods are more effective long-term solutions, and trappers should start using their skills to deploy beaver deceivers and other flow devices instead of killing the creatures.

Hooray for Leslie. And hooray for actually mentioning long-term solutions. But we need more talk about what all those beavers that were taken away once gave to Canada! Mind you, there is a lot of sanctimonious tripe about how important trapping is to indigenous people and how tragic it is that an entire way of life (not beaver life, mind you) is forgotten. I suppose with July 1st looming that’s unavoidable. What I object to is that there is ZERO mention that when a trapper turns an animal into fur it takes away the ecosystem services from ALL OF US.

Rather than complain anymore I will just post the lovely finished design that was painted for us by Coyote Brush Studios, and let you admire something truly beautiful. I’m pretty sure this makes the point better than I can hope too. Thank you Tina Curiel and Lindsey Moore for your stunning work!

There’s a reason animal rights groups demonize trappers

Re “On the trap line” by Leila Philip (Opinion, May 5): Of course animal rights people “demonize” trappers. Why shouldn’t they? Methods of controlling beaver damage abound, including beaver deceivers, baffles, and PVC pipes. Philip should pay attention to her own instinctive resistance to the cruelty of trapping; to her, the beaver is a “token of the wild.” Consider the animal that has been trapped: Perhaps the night is icy, and yet he cannot escape. He is in a great deal of pain. He tries to chew off his paw in order to rid himself of the painful trap.

Nothing can be said in favor of trapping other than by people who do not care about the animal’s suffering. That’s why we demonize trappers.

As for the trapper: Who cares if he is “the ultimate locavore,” using the defenseless animal in every possible way? He may be deeply rooted in nature, but of what significance is that when he accepts cruelty?

Virginia Fuller

Nice job, Virginia. When I read a letter like this I, of course, wish it talked less about ‘cruelty’ and more about what removing a beaver is taking away from the community in terms of ecosystem services. Every beaver you trap means a bird that won’t nest there, a trout that won’t survive, a frog that won’t reproduce. That dead beaver carcass is weighted down with ghosts, like Marley’s chains in Scrooge, or like the tin cans on a just married car, expect they make no sound and it’s more like a ‘just buried’ car, instead.

Hmmm, that would be a more complicated graphic to create, but worth thinking about.