Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary representative Alison Withey was before Huntville’s General Committee on July 26 asking the committee to consider making amendments to the municipality’s beaver dam bylaw.
The Sanctuary rescues and rehabilitates wildlife, and attempts to release them into the wild or find forever homes for animals who cannot be returned to the wild, said Withey. She said while the Sanctuary is not an advocacy group, the organization does attempt to educate people about living in harmony with wildlife.
“More than once members of the community throughout Muskoka, they come to us and they’ve been concerned about decisions that have been put in front of them as it relates to beaver dams on their property,” said Withey.
She said the way the municipality’s beaver bylaw currently reads does not include options for co-existence with the beavers. It forces property owners to give access to a Town official or a trapper to the property to deal with the nuisance beaver and/or dams and states that refusal will result in legal action and property owners will be held liable.
Withey said while she understands that beaver activity can cause damage to infrastructure, “Where we see the gap in the bylaw… has to do with the fact that nowhere, anywhere in here is there reference to co-existence strategies.”
She said residents are only given the option to give the Town or a licenced trapper access to deal with nuisance beavers or dams or face legal consequences. “So I believe this is why people have been coming to us and they’ve been concerned because they’re in that proverbial rock and a hard place and that’s the main reason why we are here today.”
Withey asked the committee to consider modifying the municipality’s beaver dam bylaw to reflect a policy of co-existence with beavers and the management of beaver dams. She suggested including in the bylaw an option to commit to coexistence strategies by a set date and if that doesn’t work, then the option of getting a trapper can be implemented. “But first and foremost people need a choice and the beavers need a chance,” she said.
Committee heard that there are alternative, non-lethal solutions to dealing with issues caused by beaver activities, solutions that have been used by municipalities across Canada. Some of the solutions they heard about involve tree wrapping as an inexpensive way to protect certain trees. Other tools mentioned included culverts that work with the dams as well as exclusion fencing and other devices such as levellers and flow devices. References were also made to the Beaver Institute and other educational organizations, knowledgeable on the issue.
Committee asked municipal staff to explore the request. You can find Withey’s presentation, HERE (pdf).
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Beavers are critical to all wildlife health and diversity, fisheries, hydrology, and so much more. Strategies to cohabitate are necessary and attainable and have succeeded in thousands of locations. Protective and exclusion structures and other cohabitation methods must be considered to maximize infrastructure stability along with more positive ecology outcomes to everyone’s benefit. Policy must take a larger, longer view to be capable of these more stable, cost effective, and sustainable outcomes that will provide a brighter future!
I commented on the towns proposed hard ass by-law concerning beavers and their dams on Aug. 5/21. I questioned their attitude then and do it again now. How many other jurisdictions have similar by-laws? How many have actually made an attempt to apply it? How successful have they been?
The beavers and their dams are natural phenomenon. A good dam with live-in beaver is a sound structure. Abandon dams are floods waiting to happen. The torrential rains that we are experiencing nowadays are natural phenomenon too. Acts of God? Who can control that?
It will be interesting so see what happens when the town tries to lay the blame for the next natural phenomenon, a burst dam, in the lap of a landowner. They can hardly control the beaver, can’t control the rain, can do little about global warming, so they will try to punish the landowner.
I realise there is the problem, but if the town attempts to mitigate one of these situations and the dam still goes out……??? If the dam is deemed to be sound and still goes out…??? Lawyers should have a ball with one of these cases.
James Salisbury: I find the “other wildlife suffers as well” part of your comment to be nonsensical. The loss of a sound dam with live beaver is the loss of an ecosystem. One created by the beaver. A rabbit drowned by a burst dam is a natural act. That same rabbit lost on a highway is simply incidental.
I have taken many visitors to our country, to a beaver dam and pond, just to show them the variety of wildlife we have here. The pond draws that wildlife in. Deer, moose, ducks, birds, turtles, snakes, a whole plethora of creatures. The loss of ‘their’ pond is a tragedy for them all. But they can be sure the beaver will rebuild. Somewhere. If we give them a chance.
We have to learn to co-exist with wild things, or we lose more than a culvert or a bit of road.
I just want to point out that, when it comes to co-habitating with beavers…it is truly impossible to maintain infrastructure aswell as maintaining Beaver dams, beavers WILL CONTINUE TO damage our rds with floods other wildlife suffers from this aswell..