Save the beavers?

SooToday.com has received the following letter to the editor from faithful readers Jennifer Santana and Carl H. Clarke:

************************* Sault Ste. Marie's slogan brags that our city is “Naturally Gifted."

Indeed, there are not many cities where a quick trip to your backyard can facilitate the fresh-air enjoyment of hiking through a rich lush forest which provides a sublime backdrop in any season.

So imagine my immediate disappointment to learn that a wildlife trapper had been hired to eradicate the beaver population, destroying a beautiful biodiverse wetland a stone's throw distance from my property's edge.

The City's initial justification was that the beaver are a serious invasive species on the land due to their modification of their natural environment by building dams and that as such, were having a detrimental impact and posing a flooding risk.

Well... further investigation by the City could not substantiate the existence of any “flooding risk."

In fact, these beaver have constructed, free of charge to the City, a beautiful stormwater management system.

Beaver ponds also help to filter out streams and rivers, removing pollutants and debris out of the water.

The City has now decided that having a beaver pond within the city poses a huge liability issue.

We believe this to be disingenuous given the larger liabilities at hand that are left without redress and the many other beaver populations within the city that are clearly not receiving the same attention.

As a concerned neighborhood, we are profoundly saddened by the impending loss of the wide variety of birds, animals, fish, amphibians and wildflowers that are dependent on the beaver pond in our backyard ecosystem.

An ecosystem that has happily maintained itself for more than 30 years.

Multiple calls to the mayor's office and our councillors have left us with nothing but unanswered questions as to the immediacy of the issue at hand, and as to why after 30 years of self-sustaining natural beauty they have now proceeded to eradicate a whole wildlife population that posed us, the people who live beside it, no immediate danger.

- Jennifer Santana and Carl H. Clarke

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