There has been progress along several fronts regarding beavers. First the state of Oregon finally laid its ridiculous dual beaver policy to rest meaning they are protected furbearers everywhere and there are actual rules about killing them.
Commission adopts rules to implement the “Beaver Bill”
CHILOQUIN, Ore.—The Commission today adopted rules to implement HB 3464 passed by the 2023 Oregon State Legislature, aka the “Beaver Bill,” which remove the complicated dual classification of beavers so they are now solely managed as furbearers (rather than predatory animals in some situations).
The new approach encourages coexistence (and less lethal take) of beaver and provides tools to more effectively manage and prevent damage caused by beaver. The rules establish a permitting process for take of beaver that are causing damage, require reporting of all beaver take and provide an opportunity for ODFW to give guidance to landowners on non-lethal methods for reducing conflict. They will help close data gaps by collecting more information on damage, complementing the agency’s Beaver Action Plan. Data collected will help determine beaver distribution, identify conflict hot spots, quantify when take does occur and reasons why.
Suzanne Fouty said it was imperfect news adding what the cheery reporting omitted:
They also approved 2 more years of allowing folks to kill beavers on public lands as a recreational activity. More later.
Rats, but it’s slightly better than it was, You know how it is. Two webbed footsteps forward, one back.
Also on the progress meter is some movement on the google action to develop tools to count beaver populations as shown with this article on Saturday:
Former Google engineer partners with scientists to create groundbreaking tool to ‘spy’ on beavers: ‘It’s really exciting’
A few years back, former Google employee Eddie Corwin started a passion project centered around the most unlikely of subjects: beavers.
As Wired reported, Corwin was looking for a way to help the company become a better steward of water. After researching the sizable impact of beaver wetlands — they can hold millions of gallons of water — he and a sustainability consultant who worked with Google, Dan Ackerstein, started sculpting an ambitious plan to use satellite imagery to detect beaver dams and ponds.
The pair eventually teamed up with programmers to develop an algorithm. Then, in May 2023, a team of beaver researchers published a scientific paper showing that the model was correct 98.5% of the time.
The applications are numerous and could help scientists estimate beaver populations and calculate these rodents’ ecosystem services — among other things, beaver ponds can provide other species with refuge during wildfires and can even stop fires in their tracks.
That’s why the new beaver-infrastructure search model will be getting its first test run in the Golden State — The Nature Conservancy and Google will be running the model this year to look for every beaver dam and pond in California.
“All of our efforts in the state should be taking advantage of this powerful mapping tool,” Kristen Wilson, the lead forest scientist at the Nature Conservancy, told Wired. “It’s really exciting.”
After the California run, the model’s developers aim to train it for other geographical areas with different types of landscapes.
“That’s the challenge for the future — how do we make this more universally accessible and usable?” Corwin told Wired.
I am pretty darn curious how many beavers there are in California, aren’t you? Maybe we should have a national guessing contest, like how many marbles are there in this jar and the winner gets to hold a baby beaver for a full minute?
