Call me paranoid, but I see some serious problems in the future with our beaver trapping here in Illinois as far as with legislation.
We now have this this crazy beaver alliance thing that has popped up,
They have assembled so called wildlife experts and they are having conventions about co existing with beavers and pushing for non lethal methods for beaver control.
They are gaining momentum.
You guys who don’t live here are even aware of the madness going on here.. it’s literally the insane running the asylum.
One of the best examples is the passage of the safety act,, which pretty much lets an arrested individual go, after giving them a paper and telling them when they need to show up for court.
Said that the cash bail only catered to the rich people and was picking on minorities who were poor and disadvantaged.

Sounds like Illinois has had folks from our (WA) Beaver Relocation program move in, they live trap relocate then pizz and moan if anyone traps beaver

You will see this new strategy popping up all over the US. Oregon is on the cusp of losing its beaver trapping (at least as we know it) this legislative session. But we started hearing several years ago about how beaver are a keystone species that will save the country from climate change, prevent forest fires, prevent flooding, restore waterways, and create wildlife habitat.

The bible that these "experts" use to fight with is a book about beavers by Ben Goldfarb, "Eager". It is a well written book and has a lot of good beaver information. It also has some very poor information. For example, he looks at what a perfect beaver stream's carrying capacity for beaver is, ie: X number of colonies per waterway mile, then extrapolates that out to all the miles of waterways in the USA and then claims that's what the landscape looked like before white man got here. (And should look like now). He estimates that there were hundreds of millions of beavers then.

This is not true and never was. For example, Oregon's coast range is full of small streams but never had much of a beaver population because the mature fir forest canopy shaded them out and there was not suitable forage. But the "experts" that have testified against beaver trapping in Oregon claim that our coast range should be teeming with flat tails and would be, if not for trapping.

Here is the book that they are using to get their ranks fired up: BTW, it is a good read and is not devoid of actual good info as well.

Those folks are fearful of the ocean's rise.

Wait until their yards & homes are underwater due to beaver dams.

There are many, many homes built too close to a beaver's floodplain.

That's OK. People should learn how to swim because coexistence is important.

I get more calls for "beaver removal with relocation" each year. Of course I tell them to find someone else. But it does seem like its gaining traction.

Those idiots need to come to this farm country and spew that nonsense.
They’d ride them out on a rail.
Beaver harvest is minuscule these days compared to the past.

There is a hiking trail open to the public here in liberal MN with a creek alongside. Beaver built their dam across the creek and the trail flooding it. They felt live trapping and relocating the beaver would be too cruel. They detoured the hiking trail to accommodate the beaver instead.

lol That says it all doesn't it!

They'll run out of detours.....just a matter of time.

I have to remove the beaver alive when trapping in the city parks. But once they are removed It's up to me what I do with them.

The problem is once they are protected and the powers that be figure out eventually that some just have to go trappers will line up to take care of the problem. Everyone that has ever trapped should turn their back on these nitwits and let them figure it out. Or make the law so absolute that beaver can't be moved or killed and stand back and watch what happens.

Here's a beaver I relocated this past season. He ended up in Idaho.

Oregon needs to look at what's happened right across the river in Washingtons Clark County ( and the rest of the state). But they wont listen,,,

We have a group here in Pocatello that thinks beaver populations would grow if trapping would stop,,,, The habitat just is not there. I ran with an Oregon trapper 30 years past He was catching otter 8 -1 in those coastal streams Lots of salmon,,, fir, cedar, spruce and once in a while an alder

Yes sir 100 percent

I don’t understand why people are always so obsessed with what other people are doing, and how to control them. I’ll leave the city folk alone to their gay parades and their electric cars, so I don’t get why they can’t leave others alone in turn. I know this, no law signed anywhere is going to have an effect on me and what I do, and if someone would like to come out here and tell me otherwise, I’ll happily shoot them.

Time to move from that crappy state.

Bounty on beaver in a lot of Arkansas

Ive always been nervous in the back of my mind about the way trapping has been viewed by the general public.. we aren’t the good guys in alot of people’s eyes. There’s really no nice way to say it, but we are cold blooded people and we kill animals. It doesn’t matter to them how violent death is dealt in the wild,, they can’t comprehend it…
But this really has me extremely concerned.. they have people who know how to say the right things and how to twist the narrative…I guess this is kinda how the cowboy felt…

Face it....they are well organized BUT CRAZY! They have been our enemy since traps were first built. Logic doesn't apply even though wildlife management is science based.