No
No, it's something else. Certain waterways that have been determined to be "impacted" or polluted with something will be closed to beaver trapping if the adjacent property is public. Oregon's DEQ is determining where such waters exist and a map will be produced showing what will be closed to beaver trapping.

Well, there is a pretty varied history on, and near Klamath Lake, and the 800 acres I trap is one dike separated from it. Now that they are bringing back the salmon after tearing out 3 big dams, who knows how my little Paradise will be affected.

We will all be on pins and needles to see how the ban affects our trapping grounds. Best of luck brother.

I know that rationally, none of this makes sense.
But how do they explain why they are doing this?

Today, the Oregon Senate voted to pass HB 3932A to tap into nature’s free waterway restoration service and the state animal: the American beaver. Once Gov. Kotek signs the bill into law, it will close beaver hunting and trapping on public lands waterways that the Department of Environmental Quality classifies as impaired. Currently, more than 106,000 miles of these impaired waterways are on public lands.

“HB 3932 gives us an opportunity to try a low tech, low-risk and no-cost strategy to address impaired waterways by encouraging beavers to return to our public lands. The science says this can work, and we want to give it a try,” said Rep. Pam Marsh, who introduced the bill to the legislature as its chief sponsor.

Oregon has the most miles of impaired waterways of any state, suffering from sedimentation, high temperature, low dissolved oxygen, and many other factors. In the past, addressing these issues has relied on costly analysis and remediation and any progress in addressing Oregon’s impaired waterways has proven difficult if not impossible. Decades of scientific evidence has shown beaver dam complexes can help improve water quality by slowing down water flow, filtering and reducing nutrient pollution, recharging aquifers, and improving habitats for other aquatic species like salmon, birds and other wildlife that depend on them. And beavers do this for free, so long as they are alive and given the opportunity to establish their rightful place in these waters.

“With HB 3932, Oregon is leading the charge on changing the narrative on beavers from pesky rodents to remarkable ecosystem engineers that can change Oregon’s degraded landscape and address its water quality problems,” said Sristi Kamal, deputy director of the Western Environmental Law Center. “We humans have spent millions of dollars for decades on restoration and remediation, while beavers do this work so effectively and efficiently. Closing beaver hunting and trapping on impaired waterways on public lands will allow us to retain beavers where they are needed the most so meaningful restoration can take place.”

HB 3932 connects one of the main ecosystem benefits from beavers to its harvest—as long as a stream/waterway on public lands remain impaired, it is closed to beaver hunting/trapping. The bill does not apply to private lands and does not interfere with private landowners’ ability to address potential beaver impacts on their lands.

“Beavers have been tending the waterways of the Beaver State since before humans emerged from the fossil record, and they’re better at it than we are,” said Jakob Shockey, executive director of Project Beaver. “With the passage of HB 3932, we are tipping our hats to the expertise of these fellow ecosystem engineers by formalizing a partnership with beavers to fix our damaged waterways.”

“Beaver managed floodplains are so productive and valuable because they are not simply streams or rivers where beavers happen to live,” said Jefferson Jacobs, riparian restoration coordinator at the Oregon Natural Desert Association. “Instead, they are habitats that beavers steward for generations, creating and maintaining unique conditions such as cool, clean water. That unique habitat depends on that consistent presence and activity of beavers. With beavers now safe, humans can be more incentivized and encouraged to improve the conditions along these streams and rivers to provide beavers with the tools they need for their, and our, survival.”

Before you read Slick's last post make sure your puke pail is close at hand.

Sounds like both sides of the river/stream must be private land. So a mile or 2 could be legal then the stream hits a slice of public land and that part will be closed. Then it hits another 2 sided private stretch and it's open there.
Public would be city, county, state, and federal. Correct?

Too late.

Before anyone thinks this nonsense will remain in Oregon, understand that this kind of junk science spreads like the plague. Someone in your state is probably reading this crap and getting a warm fuzzy feeling right now.

" creating and maintaining unique conditions such as cool, clean water. "

How does a beaver pond cool water? Sun on shallow dark bottom with all the trees cut down around it in stagnant water.

I really blame this on trappers like beaverpeeler. Beavers are roaming free now in Portland. Had the trapper stopped this a long with the homeless, Oregon would not have this issue. The state liked it so much that the homeless took over Portland they decided the best path forward is to let the beaver be free.

Here in Alaska climate change is allowing beavers to expand their range. Many folks see this as a problem. In some streams Beaver dams impede salmon migration.

Truth is this is just a thinly veiled attempt to terminate all legal trapping in the state, little by little. Many of the waters that will be closed will never support beaver populations/ and or, are places where beavers don't engage in dam building.

I would guess that most of the beavers in our state do not build dams because they live where there is no need to do so. I go for years without ever seeing a beaver dam, yet I'm one of the top beaver takers in the state.

That was my first thought. As soon as they realize nutria/otter trappers are catching beaver they will shut that down too.

Thanks for the update, Carl. Guess I need to hit the public land beaver asap.

Three questions; how did so many of Oregon's waterways become "impaired", what exactly does that mean and where can the "decades of scientific evidence" be found?

On the internut. They even claim dams cause warmer water. The world runs on B.S.

Our DEQ is the agency in charge of having mapped out impaired waters. If you can imagine that even elevated levels of nitrates or phosphates would trigger the impaired status. In some areas natural leaching of mercury from rock formations would do the trick. Low oxygen levels from decaying vegetation would also qualify a stream or lake.