Animal Advocates Watchdog

Province plans to trap and drown beavers

Family fighting to save beavers on their land from being drowned

Marcel Tetrault
Comox Valley Echo

Friday, September 10, 2010

A local family is shocked that the province plans to trap and drown beavers living in a pond on their rural property.

The creatures, which moved into the pond about three years back, have built a dam that -- if it breaches -- could cause significant damage.

"We started noticing the water was higher than the road, because they're busy little beavers," said Ann Clarkson. "There's no doubt if it burst, it would wash out the road."

As such, on Tuesday a trapper believed to have been hired by the province visited the family and told them the beavers would have to be dealt with.

The family later found out that a neighbour was told the beavers would be trapped underwater and drowned until they were dead.

That got Clarkson's daughter Joey concerned. She and her friend Breanne Larson began doing some research.

They found out that it takes a beaver 15 minutes to drown.

"That's 15 minutes of them dying and crying and clawing at the cage," said Larson. "If they need to dispose of them, then dispose of them.

"But do it more humanely."

Clarkson and Larson said they'd rather see the beavers captured, sterilized and then released on a remote part of the North Island.

It's sometimes done with other animals, said Larson, so why not do the same with Canada's national symbol.

"Beavers are what made Canada boom to what it is today, with the fur trade," she said. "It's why European settlers came here -- there was the gold rush and there was the fur trade.

"They've only just started to regain their numbers again. If a bear can be tranquilized and relocated, then why cannot we relocate (much smaller) animals."

Clarkson's mother Ann said she recognizes that the beavers are doing damage, but said the way the province plans to deal with them is entirely inappropriate.

"The point is they're holding them under water and drowning them," she said. "If there's no other alternative than killing them, then they should be killed quickly and with as little trauma and pain as is humanly possible."

Clarkson's family has lived on the property, located off the coastal highway near the former Tsolum School, for more than 120 years.

She said she remembers beavers being present on the property when she was a youngster, but it is only in the last few years that they've returned. Dams are now present on bodies of water throughout the area.

Larson and Clarkson said they would not only like to save the local beavers, but they also want to raise awareness about the way the government is dealing with the issue.

"We had no idea this was how they were trapped and disposed of," said Larson. "We want people ... to look in their own communities ... and check out how they dispose of them."

The pair started a 'Save the Beaver!' Facebook page Tuesday evening. By Wednesday morning it had more than 60 subscribers. That number had doubled by Wednesday afternoon and hit almost 350 members by Thursday morning.

Many of those members are either local students or recent grads, who immediately penned a letter to the Echo panning the province's plan.

Clarkson said the government is sending youth entirely the wrong message.

"Your whole life you're told and instructed to treat animals with respect," she said. "You're told not to torture them and that they're your friends.

"Yet they're going off and they're drowning them. What are they teaching our youth? That it's OK, if you're a pest and a pain in the ass, that you torture somebody to death?

"Kids don't understand that. Kids squish ants and they go out and they throw rocks at birds. To see people drowning beavers, how is that any better?"

A Ministry of Environment spokesperson said they could not comment on the specific case, but confirmed that they do issue permits to trap nuisance wildlife and "underwater traps are legal in B.C. and an accepted method of trapping beavers."

mtetrault@comoxvalleyecho.com

© Comox Valley Echo 2010

http://www2.canada.com/comoxvalleyecho/news/story.html?id=7a15eafe-9371-481e-bfcc-d1bc7437a41a

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