Trap ban spells lots of beavers

By George Graham
Springfield Union-News, Friday, April 7, 2000

The students' research did not advocate a return to the leg-hold trap.

     A research project conducted by four Westfield State College students indicates that the state's beaver population will grow at a rapid rate in the wake of the ban on leg-hold traps.
     The students said they took the known biological traits of beavers and applied them to mathematical formulas to make their determination.
     Their results are startling - with beavers springing up just about everywhere there's water and trees to dam it with.
     The students said that when the leg-hold traps were banned near the end of 1996, there were about 24,000 beavers statewide. About 1,300 beavers were hunted or trapped that year.
     After the legislation went into effect, only beavers deemed to be a nuisance by wildlife officials could be trapped.
     By 1999, a year in which only about 100 beavers had been trapped, the state's beaver population had more than doubled to 52,000, according to the student findings.
     If current conditions continue, the students' mathematical modeling predicts about 150,000 beavers statewide by 2005. "That's almost a beaver in every back yard," said team member Chantal Ayotte of Springfield.
     With the current harvest, the population will continue to grow at a rapid rate, said Suzanne Gallagher of Orange.
     Biology professor Donald "Buzz" Hoagland, one of the faculty advisers for the project, said Massachusetts theoretically has ample habitat to support the nearly half-million, dam-building creatures.
     Hoagland said, however, that people, annoyed by increasing flooding problems, would likely intervene well before the toothy rodents' population grows too large.
     "They would become such a nuisance that something would have to be done," said Hoagland.
     Hoagland said the model factored in age-specific and sex-specific mortality rates as well as different trapping rates for the beavers.
     The students, including Kathryn Matras of Chicopee and Inshirah Abur-Rauf of Springfield, will present their findings tomorrow at the Hudson River Undergraduate Mathematics Conference at Vassar College.
     Julian Fleron, professor of mathematics, also advises the group.
     The students' findings are timely. Both the House and Senate have unanimously passed legislation that modifies the ban.
     State Sen. Michael R. Knapik, R-Westfield, who attended the student's presentation yesterday, said the House bill allows unlimited use of the so-called Connibear trap, which works like a giant rat trap and is designed to instantly kill the animal.
     The Senate version, Knapik said, is more restrictive and allows the Connibear only to be used in damage-control situations.
     Knapik, who sits on a conference committee charged with reconciling the two bills, said the Senate version would not serve to reduce beaver populations to controllable levels.
     Knapik told the students he was impressed with their research. He plans to share their findings with his colleagues.
     Hoagland said the students are not advocating the return of the leg-hold trap, rather they wanted to provide the information and a model wildlife managers can use, but "we're not in the business of providing a management plan.'
     The issue is a touchy one, because the state's voters overwhelmingly approved the ban in 1996, Knapik said.
     "We are very leery about tinkering with it, because of the will of the people," said Knapik.
     Leg-hold traps, which often caused a lingering death, were considered cruel by animal rights groups and others who lobbied for the ban.
     Bill Hardie, a trapper from Russell, also attended yesterday's session. Hardie told the students that the Connibear trap is humane way to control the exploding beaver population.

*2001 Springfield Union-News. All rights reserved. Used with permission of the Springfield Union-News and Sunday Republican.