They can’t go change it now so I don’t mind saying much. I do have some things I won’t put in the public forum like I knew why you couldn’t be there during the house meeting. I just wasn’t going to mention why. As far as the high water mark I hope you are right. But as far a beaver tapping in Oregon we still are just not as much as it was….. I hope your right so that way you and Donnie can keep hammering them.

Amen Bruce……..

Oh Carl. If it’s up to the commission we are good. They are very unhappy with this bill

Beaver dams are rarer in some very good beaver country than a lot of people realize. A lifetime invested in the waters and your opinion invalidated because of some armchair expert somewhere.

I only see dams on small creeks, and they’re usually generations old, with a big pond or swamp behind them. Beavers aren’t really out there damming up new water, they’re just maintaining dams that their great great great great grandparents built in locations that were favorable to being able to dam it.

BS……

Yep. However the excuse they're putting forth with HB 3932 is that beaver dams are removing toxic heavy metals and purifying water. Not much mention of Coho habitat in this bill. One could guess that most of the toxics that are impairing waterways would be where there is industry. Read that big navigable waterways where beaver can't build dams anyway.

Bizarro world.

Okay vinke. I’m sure you know more about our local beavers than I do lol

Purifying water? Would you rather drink out of a beaver pond or a fast running stream? Do they know what beaver do in the water?

I see them building new dams, but it is always on small streams and swamps. Occasionally you will see the beginnings of a dam in some backwater of a bigger creek or small river. But that is some dumb beaver that is just going on instinct, it will be gone come the first good storm.

This^^^^ must be an Alaska beaver thing. Maybe those beaver populations are not expanding.

You should see em here in southern Georgia.

Beaver are public enemy number 2 to salmon runs where I live. Dams block migration. True to an extent on some systems. Coho juveniles do need some slow moving rearing habitat, but I'm not sure they need beavers to supply it? Of course if they did, on a particular system, one could just regulate trapping on that system or build a dam. Your right though, need some excuses to ban stuff.

I am going to ask a simple question. Has there been any studies conducted in Oregon or Washington that have concluded that cougars are negatively impacting beaver populations?
Always helps to have a study behind an anecdote.

To that point I don't know of any. The Makah's did a study on cougar movement and what they eat. The synopsis is they cover the entire Olympic Peninsula and they eat about everything but beavers specifically, they found some cougar key on beaver almost to exclusion of other prey. Several studies past and one ongoing about cougar in Eastern WA but nothing tied to beaver. The Panthera groups has 90 cougars radio collared on the Olympic Peninsula right now and have for a long time. I personally think it is a grift as it is easier to get a grant for studying large predators.
I know of a couple studies done to see where relocated beaver ended up, but they didn't seem to categorize mortality.
Not a study but slightly better than an anecdote is the catch statistics. In the 60s,70s and early 80s in Grays Harbor County (where I live) there was an average of about 2000 beaver a year harvested. When the price dropped after 86 to 2000 slightly less than half that was the catch. In 96 they out lawed hunting cougar with hounds, and you could see the population melt away over about 15 years. Now the annual catch is in the single digits and that includes nuisance beaver.

Vanessa Petro with the Forest Research Lab at Oregon State was involved in a beaver relocation project in the Oregon coast range. She told me that mortality within the first year was around 90%. Of that the vast majority was due to cougar kills. The beavers had tracking devices in their tails.

I sure wish she could have been able to testify at the Senate or House hearings.

Even if cougars are the problem, what are they going to do about it?. In essence, if cougars are now reducing the population in some locations, then there is no harvestable surplus for consumptive users. This is a common situation where predator prey situations get out of balance. Trap those beaver or not, they are already doomed possibly to extirpation.


One other thing here that I think causes possible declines in population would be eat backs. If beaver populations get too high for their habitat they tend to have to eat back further and further from water protection. When they have to go so far they become easier pickings for predators. Everything loves to eat beaver here.

The Oregon coast range was only suitable beaver habitat about 50-75 years ago after large wildfire burns and extensive logging opened up the canopy. IN addition, large predators such as cougars had largely been removed from the landscape by the bounty system, hound hunting, and/or poisoning. IN the early 1800's it was reported that the coast range was barren of beavers. It has been returning to that state for the last 50 years with the 1971 Forest Practices Act which does not allow logging within riparian zones and the 1994 Ban on hound hunting for cougars.

Not really eat backs but a similar problem exists. Beaverpeeler touched on it. The riparian setbacks, they vary as to class of stream but 100 feet on each side of a stream is about what a smaller stream beavers might move into. More on larger streams. Even a very small trickle will have a setback so all that grows up to larger trees that aren't good beaver food. They are forced to travel farther from safety to find food.
I will say I don't believe it makes that much difference as a cat will set on the shore and wait for a beaver. On a smaller stream a beaver doesn't have a chance as a cougar will go right in after them. Even lakes and rivers the beaver population is way down. Cats are just patient hunters, and it is easy to tell where they are working.
There're three options; Get hound hunting back and up the permitted take of cougars. Not happening because it is politically unacceptable. Or move or trap something else. I've been doing the latter.

It is hard to imagine the Grays Harbor area without any beaver, but I haven't been over there in years. I will add that there is another reason that the reported catch is in the single digits. They outlawed the use of bodygrip and leghold traps. That lowered the number of trappers a lot, but it also caused anybody who does grab their old traps out of the barn and go get rid of the beaver flooding the sister-in-laws yard, to make sure and not report it. Logging practices can be rough of the beaver population, as you explained, but I see what Dirt terms as "eat backs" here, and remember seeing the same over in Lewis and Grays Harbor counties back when I was a kid. Of course there weren't any cougars there then, but when they have to travel away from water farther for food, there are plenty of predators that like beaver, coyotes and bobcats will both grab them (and they outlawed bobcat hunting at the same time they did cougar and bear).

I remember reading an article 2-3 years ago that floated the idea of ODFW allowing the use of hounds on lions for a 2 week season in Oregon. Talked to one of the local ODFW folks about it last year and they said the public opinion against it was too much.

Hippies ruin everything