But one resident in near Truro, Nova Scotia, is furious that her local government killed at least one nearby beaver that she had enjoyed for years.
The Truro Daily News has reported that Debbie Miller of Merigomish found the beaver dead near her home two weeks after its dam was destroyed on the order of government officials. Transportation officials told the Daily News that the beavers were trapped and killed under a provincial permit after they allegedly blocked a culvert. But Miller doesn’t think that’s a good enough reason for killing the eco-engineers.
“If anyone states that killing the beavers had to be done because they were being destructive, well they did not do any proper assessment of the area,” she told the Daily News. “There was a complete lack of respect for life. What needs to change is old ways of thinking that those measures are the only ones we have. We are supposed to be the smarter mammal and yet the only solution we seem to have is to destroy.”
And Debbie is right – it’s exceptionally frustrating to know that governments are killing these important, family-based animals, particularly when solutions exist to keep them safe and in the area while still protecting infrastructure.
Making the entire story more deplorable is the knowledge that more beavers will return to this area, since nothing has been done to make the landscape less attractive to their impressive damming tendencies.
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