Is trapping the right way to manage beaver in Beaver Creek Park?

The Hill County Park Board for several months has been hearing proposals for alternative ways to control the beaver population in Beaver Creek Park, but one user of the park says the best way is how it has been done for decades - trapping.

"The (Hill County Park Board) has managed the park for decades," Fran Buell said. "They did it right."

Buell, a long-time trapper herself and member of the National Trappers Hall of Fame, added that the park has healthy wildlife and the only thing detrimental to the park is the beavers cutting down trees and causing flooding. 

Park board member Renelle Braaten said that she is trying to put together a natural resource committee to look at wildlife management because the issue is larger than just beavers - it's overall management of the park.

"It's not all about trapping beavers," she said. "It's about the ecosystem and the need to get someone who knows what they are going to see what needs to happen."

In August, Braaten brought in Humane Society of the United States Senior Advisor Wildlife Response and Policy expert Dave Pauli to talk about, managing beavers and the ecosystem.  The park board also heard a proposal to partner with a local consultant, Norsman Consulting Group Managing Partner Todd Hanson, at no charge to help the board gather more data and resources to make decisions for a long-term management plan for the park.

Braaten said the park board and the members of the community have a responsibility for promoting, preserving and protecting the park for future generations and she disagrees with trapping as a method of wildlife management.

"I think it's barbaric, I think it's outdated, I think it's needless torture, I think it's cruel, I think it causes excessive suffering and it's indiscriminate," she said.

She added that although she is no expert on the subject, she knows the park board could be using a number of different methods for wildlife management other than trapping.

"You can learn to work with them," she said. "... I'd like to see us work with Mother Nature, not against her."

Braaten said that from her own personal research and what she has seen and read on Facebook trapping is cruel and inhumane and has no place in modern wildlife management. Beavers play a large role in the ecosystem in Beaver Creek Park and it is a good time to look into other tools for management, such as beaver deceivers or cast masters. Beaver deceivers and cast masters are non-harmful methods of allowing the beaver populations to maintain their activity while reducing the amount of flooding in the area by using pipes and wire to redirect the water, lowering the levels but not destroying the dams or the environment surrounding them. She added that although she does not know the number of beavers which were trapped every year in the park, Montana public lands are not a place to encourage trapping.

Beaver deceivers are relatively cheap and easy to install, she said. She added that the park board could get a number of volunteers to help set up the beaver deceivers and it would be more of a permanent solution. 

Buell said that trapping is the best method for wildlife management and is a human way to control the population of beavers. Trappers, also do have the ability to target specific animals by altering the triggers and a number of different methods, although it is not always 100 percent accurate. She added that trapping is also generally human and even if another animal, such as a pet, was caught in a foothold trap the animal will not be terribly harmed.

She said that Beaver Creek Park has a large population of beavers. One pair of beavers can repopulate from 80 to 150 beavers within four years, with one pair of beavers possibly producing three to five kits, infant beavers, every year. She added that if the park has an overpopulation of beavers, the park could be changed drastically, with the beavers cutting down most of the trees and making the park a large wetland area. Having an overpopulation of beavers also raises the risk of beavers contracting diseases, which could be spread to humans and other animals, and starvation from not having enough food and resources available to sustain the population. An overpopulation could also cause the beavers to migrate to other areas.

"Trapping is recognized by the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks as one of the most ethical, human and responsible ways to harvest an animal," she said.

Trappers can use a number of different traps, such as a body grip trap or a foothold submersion trap, which kills the beavers in less than 3 minutes, she said. With a body grip trap, she said, the trigger can be moved to better target specific animals and once it is triggered unconsciousness is immediate and the beaver dies within 6 seconds.

Foothold submersion traps submerge the beaver underwater where it eventually dies of carbon dioxide poisoning, she said. She said that this year, after the trapping camp at Beaver Creek Park, she had sent off one of the beavers which was trapped to testing, which showed the beaver had no debris in its lungs and died of carbon dioxide poisoning. She added that trappers in the area do not use normal foothold traps, mostly using the foothold submersion traps.

Trapping has been permitted in the park for a long period of time and has been an important tool to the park, she said.

Braaten said that trapping does the opposite of controlling the population, instead encouraging more beavers to breed. 

"If you stop trapping them and stop killing them, the population would level out," she said. "Killing off their offspring is making them breed more, so you're not accomplishing anything. How many years have we been trapping out of Beaver Creek Park? And we still have a problem. So why don't we try some of these other things." 

"I would like to see trapping beaver out of Beaver Creek Park the last resort, not the first and only," she added.

Braaten said if people have problems with beavers, such as flooding of their lease, they could move their cabins.

Beaver deceivers and other tools

Humane Society expert Dave Pauli said that the best way to manage any property and any program is generally not one specific way and the park board could use a number of different methods and tools to manage the park.

"I am in no way questioning the quality of the management," he said. "I think that Hill County has a truly wonderful resource there. I was very impressed with the park and it was not only a recreation gem, it's an ecosystem gem. It's a unique park and has great educational potential."

The fact the board is discussing other options for wildlife management is an example of good management, he said. The board has done a good job of managing the park, but other options may be available that could be better.

Pauli said that for the past 10 years, according to park records, the park has trapped about 180 beavers a year, but the park still has a flooding issue.

"So maybe that method doesn't work," he said. 

He added that trapping also has some negative effects and disrupts the population. But tools, such as beaver deceivers, are effective and may be able to reach mutually acceptable results.

"Generally speaking, with wildlife, you cannot kill your way to success," he said.

Pauli said he is not totally opposed to trapping although the park needs to have other tools it can use and turn to. 

"I am not suggesting that it's off the table, but it should be a tool that is used in a situation where it actually solves something," he said.

He added that the beaver deceivers are generally successful, and although the beavers work to plug them up, if the beaver deceiver is maintained and regularly cleared out, the beavers will become discouraged and either learn how to live with it or move.

But beaver deceivers also are dependent on the situation, he said. It's not a one-size-fits-all and in some areas it may not be as successful as in others.

"It's just another tool in the toolbox managers can use for whatever best fits the situation," he said.

Buell said that, in her experience, beaver deceivers do not work, adding that she and her husband attempted to set one up, but beavers are crafty and great engineers - as long as they hear or sense water movement they will work to stop it. She added that if the beavers did decide to move because of the beaver deceivers, that is only moving the problem to another place rather than solving the problem.

She said that if the park board was to move forward with installing the beaver deceivers in the study areas the wildlife committee is looking into, they would have to establish buffer zones.

Buffer zones would cut off access to parts of the park where the beavers are to both visitors and cattle to try to preserve the environment. In other areas where they have attempted to create buffer zones, people have lost fishing accesses and the ability to observe wildlife.

Beaver ecology and population stabilization

Fish, Wildlife and Parks Wildlife Management Biologist Scott Hemmer said that in his experience beaver deceivers and similar methods have not always been successful and without any knowledge of the population size of the beaver in the park currently he has no idea of how effective it is as a form of management. 

"Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't," he said.

"I have seen cases where these tools were successful and also experienced times where beavers were able to clog these devices," he said. "I do think proper installation and maintenance are crucial to the success of these devices. I am not sure if there is one silver bullet for dealing with beaver problems and each situation may require a different tool and approach to help mitigate the problems that can be caused by beavers."

He added that trapping is a way to keep population size down, although it does encourage a higher amount of breeding, but not necessarily enough to counter the trapping. He said that if trapping is used as a method of management it has to be done continuously, not just every once and awhile.

"Assuming current harvest has been keeping beaver populations below carrying capacity, then stopping trapping would lead to some increase in beaver numbers," Hemmer said. "This should lead to more beaver-created habitat - wetland - and would also result in greater use of woody vegetation for food and creating dens and dams. It is pretty difficult to predict how much change you would see long-term on a park-wide scale without knowing what current beaver populations are in relation to what they could be and a lot of other factors - such as grazing, climate, predation."

If the park board was to stop trapping throughout the park, the population of beavers would eventually stabilize, although it would be through a combination of lower breeding numbers, starvation and a number of other detrimental effects, Hemmer said. Having a higher population of beavers also leaves the beavers more susceptible to contracting and spreading diseases, which could result in the death of a large number of beavers. He added that although it is not a guarantee, it is possible these diseases could spread to people, cattle, pets and other wildlife. 

"From what I have seen and experienced with beavers and trapping is that the primary reasons we see interest in beaver trapping are not necessarily large scale population control," he said.

Usually, people trap for the recreational opportunity, in response to beaver damage and as a tool that many landowners find effective for addressing their localized beaver issues, he said.  

"Generally, long-term, beavers are good at recolonizing and so trapping in most cases cannot be a one-time fix," he said.