Heidi slaved away yesterday at the beaver funerals, counting the numbers of the fallen. You’ll be happy to know that even though Placer county is still issuing the most permits, it is for a smaller number of beavers, authorizing the deaths of a mere 284 beavers last year with zero unlimited permits.
Merced did not do so well. It issued a mere 18 permits with 11 of them for an unlimited number of beavers. Lassen too issued few permits but all 6 of them were unlimited. This of course makes it impossible to count the number of beavers California had permission to kill but it is somewhere in the ball park of 2800 + 23 unlimiteds. So we can guess somewhere around 3000, which is consistent with prior years.
The good part: and there is a good part somewhere I swear, is that out of 143 permits the issuing officer mentioned sand painting, wrapping trees or installing a flow device some 25% of the time. Which, lets not fail to notice, is way,way more than zero. In fact, for the first time EVER this year there was a recommendation that the party requesting put in an ANALOG. Meaning make their own beaver dam so that when the beavers come back they go where you want them not where you don’t.
So things do change a little at a time. Don’t loses site of that. Back in the dark ages when Martinez wanted to save its beavers do you know what every single person who called CDFG was told about flow devices?
They never work.
