I will never stop feeling a little thrill in my veins when I read beaver artricles that start with phrases like “Community reacts“. The killing of beavers in Ann Arbor is not going away quietly. There were at least 7 headlines in my mailbox last night. Including this from a very unusual voice on public radio:
Community reacts to City of Ann Arbor killing beavers at Leslie Park
The local community has been raising concerns over the City of Ann Arbor and the Washtenaw County Water Resources Office’s choice to exterminate beavers in Ann Arbor.
In a joint statement shared with WEMU, Ann Arbor city and Washtenaw County officials consulted experts from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Department of Agriculture on managing the beavers and their dam at the Leslie Park Golf Course. They were informed of the possibility of building a beaver pipe to allow water to flow through the dam.
But with no guarantee of the pipe working and failure would mean flooding around the local area, officials decided to kill the beavers.
Director of Communications for the Huron Valley Humane Society, Wendy Welch says killing wildlife is neither effective nor humane in the long term.
“As we found it happens often with wildlife, if it is a good place for them to be, they will keep coming back to the area. So, you might kill some now, but some additional ones will come back later on, because they enjoy that environment.”
Welch adds that beavers are a keystone species because their dams help increase biodiversity and keep the water clean.
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