This commentary is by Jay Petrillo of Williston, a retired college professor and administrator.
The recent ad hominem attacks against Vermont Fish & Wildlife are too emotionally driven and lack any sound research to support their unfounded assertions.
The arguments against trapping are really less about the science and research and more about imposing their beliefs. Emotional spleen-venting and wildlife advocacy based on anecdotal evidence give rise to divisiveness, instead of initiating fruitful and productive civil discourse.
I have a great deal of respect for Vermont’s licensed trappers. Trapping has been a tradition for Vermonters to obtain a sustainable and valuable food source, pelts, and “flavoring agents” for many years.
When development occurs near wildlife habitat, we will always run into human-wildlife conflicts. More development equals more displaced wildlife and more human-wildlife conflicts — especially regarding beavers.
Trapping is an effective means of acquiring food. If there are severe restrictions placed on Vermont’s licensed trappers bound by ideology, rather than economic necessity, a series of unfortunate events will arise.
There seems to be a very common Disneyesque perception of wildlife. This sanitized view overlooks the natural world and the sources of our food. There is a vast complex system in place of how and where packaged meat is sourced. It is very convenient to purchase packaged meat, but we tend to conveniently block out the steps and procedures involved in the mass consumption of boneless breasts and other meats.
We could, conceivably, be grief-stricken about the steps involved due to the corporatization of any type of meat and seafood. Any type of “processing” of a live food source could be considered inhumane. There is not really any Likert scale measuring pain when millions of livestock shuffle off their mortal coils to feed America.
The U.S. meat and poultry industry processed 52 billion pounds of meat in 2017. Chickens that are processed for the preparation of chicken piccata do not really die a dignified death and do not exactly hum Springsteen’s “The Rising” before their inevitable demise.
Even the lobster feels pain when boiled for consumption. In a 2004 piece written by David Foster Wallace, “Consider the Lobster,” for Gourmet Magazine, he poses the existentialist question, “Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for gustatory pleasure?” He argues that lobsters do in fact feel pain. Lobsters have an “exquisite tactile sense, one facilitated by hundreds of thousands of tiny hairs that protrude through their carapace.”
There are nutritional benefits of beaver meat (University of Rochester Medical Center Nutrition Facts of Beaver Meat). Properly processed beaver meat can help address Vermont’s growing food insecurity.
More opposition to trapping will result in an exponential increase in the beaver population. According to the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department beaver web page: “Aerial surveys conducted on the Green Mountain National Forest in the 1980s and 1990s indicated that beaver population levels had increased by 120% in the ten years between surveys.”
As a result of misguided public outcry, Massachusetts banned the use of both steel-jawed and padded leghold traps entirely in 1996. In 2000, they realized it was a “broken law” and, as a result, “the Legislature modified the trap ban legislation in response to growing beaver complaints and changes in public attitudes” (The Implication of a Statewide Ban on Trapping: The Massachusetts Experience).
Protect Our Wildlife frequently refers to a survey that lacks any statistical significance to justify its cause. 62.8% (only 384) “agreed” to the biased statement that neglected the Oxford comma: “Should Vermont ban the use of steel jaw leghold, body gripping traps and any types of drowning traps?” A total of 611 Vermonters responded to the poll — not really a representative sample of Vermonters.
Coexistence with the beavers involves costs and significant challenges. The extent, lifespan, and implication(s) of beaver-dam-induced-floods are inherently unpredictable.
Beavers are capable of creating major property damage and wreaking havoc. Boyles and Savitzky (2008) point out various studies of the “… damage caused by beavers is a costly problem for many transportation departments in the U.S. … Arner and Dubose (1979) estimated that economic losses attributed to beaver activity exceeded $4 billion in the southeastern U.S. over the previous 40 years, and Miller (1983) estimated that annual damage was between $75 and $100 million in the U.S.” (p. 47).
The tragic Amtrak accident that occurred back in July 1984 in North Williston was the result of the collapse of beaver dams: “Federal investigators have concluded that the collapse of a series of beaver dams caused the flash flood that undermined a section of track in Vermont last year, resulting in the derailment of an Amtrak train. Five people died in the derailment and 26 were seriously injured” (New York Times, “Amtrak accident laid to beavers,” 1985, para.1) In the Nov. 15, 2021, issue of the New Yorker, “Deer Wars and Death Threats” proclaims: “Only a fraction of wildlife management is about biology. ‘The rest is sorting out why people believe what they do.’”
