WLAP/SRM Region 1 - Beaver Management Guidelines

Provincial Beaver Management
Policy Summary

Canadian Beaver

The beaver has been many things in the history of Canada and British Columbia. National symbol. Source of food and clothing for aboriginal peoples. A driving force for European exploration of North America. Beaver pelts even served as currency in early colonial period. Some of the first wildlife regulations in British Columbia applied to the beaver, including the province-wide hunting and trapping closures between 1906 and 1911 and between 1919 and 1921. By the mid-1940s, British Columbia wildlife authorities considered the beaver the most important fur resource because its dams provided habitats for other important furbearers such as mink, muskrats and otters. Other observers have cited the beaver-produced benefits to other wildlife including fish, moose, waterfowl and a variety of other birds. A healthy beaver trapline is rich in other wildlife, as well. This publication has been written to provide trappers with some guidelines on how to manage this valuable resource.

ECONOMIC CONSIDERATIONS

There is evidence that beavers are greatly under harvested in British Columbia. Annual harvests during the 1980s have averaged only 16,000 pelts. These small annual harvests have never exceeded six per cent of the most recent beaver population estimate of 400,000 to 600,000 animals, completed in 1979. Most authorities agree that beavers can usually sustain annual harvests of at least 25 per cent of their population or, from 100,000 to 150,000 animals in British Columbia. The highest average pelt price of $52 was paid in 1946, the same year the province experienced the biggest beaver harvest, 23,000 pelts. Total revenue to British Columbia beaver trappers that year was $1.2 million. The positive impact of beavers on the economy of British Columbia and North America is not limited to the value of their fur. Beavers also produce environmental benefits. They create and maintain habitats for other species of animals. They also work to stabilize watersheds, an activity with real, but unmeasured, dollar values.

On the negative side, beavers cost North Americans millions of dollars every year by causing flooding and associated damage to private and public property. The exact dollar value of the damage done by beavers in British Columbia is not known, but it may be substantial in some areas. Beaver activity can also harm fisheries values, by impeding fish movement through rivers and streams at critical times of the year. Balanced management of the beaver resource-the theme of this publication-can increase the benefits to British Columbia through more revenue from pelt sales and decreased damage to property and fisheries.