Beaver battle ongoing after traps fail to work

IOsoyoos Today t’s an unpopular fight with a popular foe — and it has the Town of Osoyoos rethinking its strategy. The town has pulled traps it had set on Lakeshore Drive early this fall to catch a pesky beaver chewing on trees near a pond area adjacent to the Walnut Beach Resort.

“We attempted to trap the beaver, we failed. And then it seemed the public was apparently quite excited about (the process),” said Jim Dinwoodie, the town’s director of operational services.

“We thought if we weren’t going to be successful in catching the beaver, we might as well pull the traps and see what happens.”

The beaver, Dinwoodie explained, was behind flooding that occurred in the pond in September. The animal had plugged a sewer that takes the pond’s overflow and other storm water underneath Lakeshore Drive to Osoyoos Lake.

The animal, which the town believes is living in the lake, is chewing on trees in the area.

“What we don’t want to have happen is for the beaver to fall one of those trees on to somebody or a car or across the road,” he said. “We’ve now wrapped those trees in chicken wire in an attempt to discourage the beaver from doing that.”

Dinwoodie added, however, if the chicken wire doesn’t work, the town may have to go back to its original strategy of trapping the beaver.

“Chicken wire doesn’t always work. It also costs money — to chicken-wire every tree on that property, well, there’s a bunch of trees. We’re also trespassing on private property. We have the road right-of-way, but that’s where our property stops.

“(But) if a tree falls over on our road — because it’s a big tree — now it’s our problem.”

Speaking to the public outcry on local social media about trapping and killing Canada’s national symbol, the town’s chief administrative officer, Barry Romanko, wondered how local residents had come across the traps.

“We have people who are entering an area that is advertised as a closed area,” he said. “Those are safety hazards in themselves. The social media is talking about making sure a dog doesn’t get caught in a live trap.

“My question is, why is that dog off-leash? — because it’s supposed to be on-leash. And why are (people) in a restricted area?”

He also defended the town’s use of traps to extract the beavers.

“I know it’s a difficult process for people to understand, but they are causing damage,” he said.

“This is the way that they’re commonly dealt with. Relocation of beavers is not a common practice.”