Background

SB 5846 is a Washington state Senate bill. The bill seeks to add to the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s powers and duties under chapter 77.12 RCW and create a corresponding grant program. If passed, it would direct the Department to “create and implement a statewide beaver ecosystem management plan.” In general, beaver ecosystem management is the enabling of the positive effects of beaver, a keystone species, to naturally occur and so benefit the environment and other animals. Up to now, the Department’s beaver policy has been limited to a pilot program of relocating beavers and providing trapping licenses. But under SB 5846, the Department would have to acknowledge the importance of beavers both by defining them as keystone species and by planning beaver protection, reintroduction, and education. The Department would also have to make a grant program for beaver education, landowner technical assistance, and beaver relocation programs.

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Talking Points

The Bill is realistically founded on the role of beaver, as a keystone species, in maintaining and saving ecosystems.

• National Geographic and the Bill consider beavers to be ecosystem engineers, one type of keystone species. Through activities such as dam building, beavers maintain dead trees and promote functioning rivers. Without keystone species like beavers, ecosystems become susceptible to problematic changes, including invasive species and less wetlands.
• The Bill directs the Department to “create and implement a statewide beaver ecosystem management plan.” In this plan, the Department would have to specify the role of beavers and call beavers keystone species.
• The Bill acknowledges that watersheds, salmon, and other animals receive benefits from beavers.

The Bill directly protects wildlife.

• The Department’s plan would have to include “recommendations and guidance” about protection of beavers, reduction of beaver mortality in three types of areas/habitats, and assistance for protecting habitat or participating in beaver relocation.

BUT lack of further specificity on beaver protection may continue the practice of beaver lethal removal by landowners unless the Bill is amended.

• The Department summarizes RCW 77.36.030 as saying that an “owner, the owner’s immediate family, an employee, or a tenant of property may trap [only with a live trap] or kill a beaver on that property if the beaver is threatening human safety or causing property damage” without a permit.
• This allowance poses a substantial barrier to the implementation of beaver ecosystem management by posing a threat to participating beavers. It also undermines the education efforts, since an owner may trap or kill a beaver under the circumstances without having participated in education or implemented safeguards (non-lethal property protections) first.
• At the very least, the Bill should be amended to require implementation of safeguards or participation in education for owners to even have such an ability.

The Bill promotes tolerance and understanding of wildlife’s importance to people and the environment.

• Recommendations and guidance will have to be developed regarding management of beaver conflicts, mitigation of property damage, and education and outreach to landowners and community members.

• The Department would have to “prioritize” resources toward resolution of human conflict with beaver: “[E]ducation, coexistence, relocation, and as a last resort, lethal removal services.”

BUT Lethal removal services are inconsistent with typical beaver issues, available alternative means, and definition of beavers as a keystone species.

• The Bill upholds most of the Department’s mandate.

  • The Department’s mandate (RCW 77.04.012) includes “shall preserve, protect, perpetuate, and manage the wildlife.”

  • This Bill appropriately promotes preservation, protection, and perpetuation of beaver.

  • However, management of beaver historically falls short of promoting beaver survival in a humane way. The Department has offered trapping permits and lethal removal services. The presence of lethal removal in this Bill keeps these shortfalls. See the lethal removal point.

Beaver ecosystem management has had significant benefits in other places where it has been implemented.

• This Bill is an opportunity to bring beavers back to their natural activities in Washington, along with their benefits.

  • According to the Department, beavers used to be “widely distributed” across the continent. This was before trapping destroyed beaver populations in the 1800s.

  • While it is hard to find estimates of beaver population in Washington, it is clear that the Bill will promote the ability of beavers to thrive in areas where they may have been threatened by lack of understanding of them.

• The grant program helps organize funds so that beaver ecosystem management can actually occur.

Emphasis on technical assistance and resources in the grant program can potentially prevent waste of public funds.

• Financial assistance could be more costly— both in terms of funds and the costs to ecosystems and beavers of paying landowners rather than finding and implementing coexistence solutions.