...to be sealed or tagged.

Here in region 1 ,and only here in SE Alaska , Adfg requires us to have beavers sealed or tagged. They place a metal tag on every beaver and take a measurement ,length and width, and ask the trapper the sex and location.
It's such a waste of time and costs the state money, which they dont have. I want to submit a proposal about it, so that it might change. My understanding was they were concerned about a population on one island, baranof, I think...years ago.
I want to know what other states in the Union require an official to place a tag or seal on these rodents.
I have heard Maine does and some Canadian provinces. What others and for what reason?

At one time it was required in NY, not anymore.

not in michigan

Used to be in Michigqn, not sure what year is stopped. I have some of the old metal seals somewhere if i look hard enough. Ill bet most states required them in the past.

Louisiania has an severance tax on beaver and every other furbearer. WVa must tag beaver.

NJ does. For Beaver and Otter.

Indiana does not

Not in NC.

Connecticut wastes time and money to put a metal tag on beaver

Some time in the early '80's Michigan dropped the requirement.I remember getting my first beaver tagged .

We used to have to have all our fur except muskrats sealed(stamped) before selling or to keep over out of season.
It was a pain hauling all your fur to the Ministry office or agent, unbagging all that fur getting each and every one sealed and recorded,and re bagging it again.
We got that requirement changed years ago and since then we record our own fur on our harvest report and submit it by the deadline on June 10.

Maine requires them to be tagged, .25 cents each and month and township it was taken

Minn. in the southern part had tags back in the late 60s, you got 10, ended shortly thereafter.

Rossco, a little perspective from my point of view...

I was the Area Biologist for 13 years in western Interior Alaska. This was many years ago (1986-1998). Beaver sealing was required. Historically, beaver season had been closed for several years. Then, populations started to rebound, and seasons were opened, but with a personal limit (I think it was 5, then bumped to 10). When I got there, the limits were still on, but it had been raised to 20 or 25 beaver (if I recall correctly). Very few trappers were taking beaver, and populations had rebounded very well. I thought it ludicrous to have individual limits on a resource that was very abundant and the trapping was insignificant. I went to the Board of Game and tried to get rid of the limits. They demanded that I produce numbers of animals annually harvested. Since, in those days, a lot of the beaver pelts were used domestically, the catch data were not reflected in the sales information of pelts sold locally or of pelts shipped to the auctions. The only way I got the limits taken off, was to go back through the sealing records. Fortunately, it worked.

Now, I would agree in particular cases that the sealing requirement may not be needed. I'm no longer intimately familiar with the Chichagof situation. I was AB there in Sitka for a short time (from 1998 to 2003), and as a manager, I was acutely interested in tracking the harvest of beaver from the ABC islands, and was trying to get a season opened up. Without the harvest data after the season was initially opened, there probably wouldn't have been a season at all. That all occurred after I went back to the interior.

Jack

We used to have to seal beaver here when we had a 40 beaver limit. If you have no limit, there really is no reason to seal them, unless harvest could actually impact the population. They dumped the sealing requirement, sometime after the limit was removed. I'm a sealer and we never had to record sex or specific location other than Unit and drainage. ADF&G never has had an idea of what the population is doing and probably never will. I do though.

I'd make a conservation pitch. The money they spend $1.00 per beaver ammounts to nothing. If you have no limits, and no conservation issue, then it is just an inconvienence. You have examples in your own State where sealing requirements have been removed. What other States do really is not relavent. I'd research the Alaska changes to sealing. JMHO

FYI "Here in region 1 ,and only here in SE Alaska , Adfg requires us to have beavers sealed or tagged." This is factually incorrect. Lots of Alaska still has sealing requirements.

In Nevada only bobcats have to be sealed. They monitor the bobcat population carefully, but there is no limit at this time. We have to turn in the lower jaw for analysis and get the pelt sealed. I never looked into it much but I believe it’s because bobcat in this area are worth so much money some years, I know some trappers that have averaged $600 some years, that if they don’t keep a very close eye on them a big boom in bobcat price would decimate the population with every Tom, dick and harry out there killing every $600 bobcat they can get their hands on. I believe that’s why nonresident trappers are not allowed to trap bobcat here as well.

Minnesota does not

In the early 90s, the Fairbanks area had a limit and they needed sealed. It seems like it was a 20 or 25 beaver limit. But I can not remember for sure.
Bob, Bobcats need to be tagged/sealed in every state. Even in the state they average $30.

Glad you are paying attention, you are correct....Units 1 thru 17 all have a sealing requirement per the trapping regulations. I'll have ro research how the interior and northern regions got that struck...as Gulo gave his perspective, and we do have data from the past sealing records.

Ohio did in the 70s to early 80s.