THE BEAVER KILLING FIELDS

Today is a mixed review of a beaver day, a triumph and a tragedy. Or rather 146 tragedies, made possible by a California Department of Fish and Wildlife that still believes that it’s a reasonable thing to report under past attempts that you had diligently tried “Hazing and debris removal” before requesting a permit. If you were asking for a permit to give up on your children you might just as easily write that you tried “loud music and making collages” as a earnest attempt at parenting. Because it would be exactly as useful.

All of the awarded permits combined add up to an allowed take of 2,626 beavers in a mere 23 counties in the state. They are generally where we’ve come to expect, surrounding the delta and wicking out from that center. The majority of permits was once again issued for Placer county, but the majority of beavers was authorized for take in Sacramento which I suppose is what we should expect.

Interesting to me in a grim kind of way is all the regions we used to see beaver permits issued and now don’t. Like Kern and Riverside and Mendocino. Places where the beaver population was starting I guess to rebound, and then they were depredated and progress stopped.  Of course CDFW would say that just because 2626 beavers were permitted to be killed it doesn’t mean that many were actually killed. Except there were still 6 permits given for unlimited beaver, so for all we know it the actual tallies could even be higher. Plus there is no official with a clipboard coming to check that if your permit was good for 17 beavers you actually didn’t kill 18 by mistake. Or 118.

So I think it’s reasonable to assume that California kills at least 1500 beavers a year, maybe more like 2000.

What does that mean? It means that all the salmon those beavers would have helped, all the fires they might have prevented, all the drought they would have averted is lost in a pile of bones and fur. Some in the name of development and some just to preserve someone’s rosebush in their front yard. It continues  to be a hard world out there for a beaver. And there are  so many places where the light still doesn’t reach.

Thank you to Robin Ellison for obtaining the permits and to Molly Foley and Jon Ridler for helping me process them. It’s been a grueling 4 days. But there is a small comfort in that many many more permits in 2017 reported or recommended wrapping trees or painting them with sand as a defense and 11 of those permits discussed the use of a pond leveler. I guess that’s something.

Baby steps for babies.

Meanwhile Ben Goldfarb continues to fight the good fight and received a Pen award for his efforts. In case you want to see what a big deal the ceremony was (like the Oscars for writing) and hear his hopeful acceptance speech I have cued up his award and acceptance which is a fairly optimistic look at the differences we can make. Enjoy.