It's a sad day for wildlife and sportsmen when the agency charged with wildlife management sits back and let this kind of nonsense happen.
They can remain neutral but still present scientific wildlife management facts.
Oh, this problem is much deeper than just sitting back.
The department has fish biologists that brought this false narrative up front and center, refused to listen or observe any facts that didn't fit their narrative. A literal call to arms to stop beaver trapping.
Blaming trappers for the decline of beaver in small coastal tributaries, the reality is a beaver cannot exist in small stream environments due to our overpopulation of cougar. These streams are inches deep and only a few feet wide for most of the year here.
We are overflowing with beaver in our rivers, lakes, and agricultural small streams.
There have been radio collared beaver reintroduction efforts into these coastal habitats, these beavers were nearly 100% predated on by cougar [documented] and most were killed with weeks.
Start pitching dead beavers out in our coast range for cat bait and by far cougars take most of the carcasses right out of the gate. That demonstrates their presence overall on the landscape.
The lions have wiped the porcupine off the landscape here as well. Used to see 6-10 per night if you were looking for them, I've personally only seen one in the coast range in the last 20 years.
Wonder why trappers were not blamed for this decline, it's because there was/is not mandatory reporting on porcupine harvests like there is on beaver.
ODFW has been infiltrated by anti trapping sentiment, these issues that keep coming up are the direct result of that.
The dept is forcing us into collecting data that is public record and being used against trappers very successfully, i.e. cascade fox, and coastal marten.
