Ditch Creek resident Bob Caesar is among those who successfully acquired a trapping permit for his neighborhood stream and then proceeded not to use it. His reasoning was that the Wyoming Wetlands Society had been transplanting problem beavers into the drainage to reestablish populations, but a fur trapper was running a trapline that was negating the effort. Today, Caesar said, beavers are relatively sparse in the drainage that climbs east into the Leidy Highlands.

“I do know from talking to old-timers that they’re used to be some big beaver ponds up here and good trout fishing in those beaver ponds,” Caesar said in an interview. “And that’s all gone.”

Caesar was disappointed with how Game and Fish initially responded to the situation.

“I look at it as being vindictive, and that’s the kind of stuff you do in middle school,” Caesar said. “Why don’t they pick up the phone and say, ‘Hey Bob, can we talk about this? ‘But they went around [us].”

I’m thinking when you’re trying to save beavers in Wyoming you have to learn to talk differently on their behalf. You have to throw around phrases like “Talking to old timers” and   “Hey Bob can we talk about this?” You should probably learn to say ‘folks’ once in a while too. Because it helps to not sound too uppity.

But sometimes it works.

“We recognize the keystone nature of beavers,” Game and Fish’s McWhirter said, “and their extremely valuable role on the landscape. We don’t want to see that impacted.”

 Hmm. That’s nice. I wish CDFG had ever said that ever in their entire existence. That would be nice.

Some reaches of northwest Wyoming streams are already completely closed to beaver trapping, including Cache Creek, Cliff Creek and Granite Creek downstream of the hot springs. A common thread among those three streams is that they parallel roads, are easily accessed and see heavy recreational use.

Jackson writer and retired Bridger-Teton National Forest employee Susan Marsh took issue with changes that were afoot to Fall and Mosquito creeks, two of the drainages still slated for unlimited trapping. At both streams, she noted that beaver activity often occurs right along the well-used roads paralleling the creeks.

“Therefore the ease of trapping is increased in the same places where people camp and picnic,” Marsh wrote. “Instead of going to an unlimited take of beavers in these areas, we would urge [Game and Fish] to approach trapping regulations with caution, realizing that this activity can be incompatible with other uses of the national forest.

“The more dogs that end up in leg hold traps or snares,” she said, “the more public outrage will turn toward trapping in general.”

See, that there is some of those special Wyoming arguments against trapping I mentioned before. “Don’t allow trapping on the creeks where folks picnic because when the family dog gets caught in the conibear people will just be MORE anti trapping – and we surely wouldn’t want that”.

Very clever. I like it, Right up there with, “Don’t allow so much beaver trapping because a thriving population will produce more of the other wildlife we all want to trap”.

Game and Fish, meanwhile, is moving forward with plans to implement an annual beaver-monitoring program. The results from the surveys, which will be both ground-based and aerial, could help shape future beaver trapping seasons.

Hmm. So it looks like Game and Fish decided on a kind of muted unlimited policy in which they decided some streams are off limits and some streams are free-for-alls in the hope that this would regulate the beaver population. BUT they are going to implement an annual beaver monitoring program just to make sure they don’t kill too many.

I know its not enough. And the controlled trapping was better, but gosh I wish CDFG had EVER EVER EVER had a beaver monitoring program to count if there were enough beavers left. Or even admitted the need for one.

Sheesh.