Beaver and River Otter Campaign
Beavers
- Beavers are a critical and useful part of our ecosystem.
- Beavers are a keystone species.
- Beavers increase groundwater storage and raise water tables.
- Beavers decrease flooding.
- Beavers keep ephemeral and intermittent creeks flowing year-round.
- Beavers filter sediments and pollutants from streams.
- Beavers create aquatic habitat for aquatic species as well as habitat for other wetlands and riparian associated or dependent terrestrial species. Some of these other species generate hunting/fishing license sales & wildlife
watching opportunities. - Beavers are fun & interesting to watch
- Trapping of beaver results in incidental killing of river otters who are strongly associated with beavers.
- Beaver are hard to find in the Black Hills of SD
- Many public land acres are managed for wildlife, multiple use, recreation/scenery and watershed protection values.
- SD statute provides for landowners to call up SD GFP and get permission to remove conflict beavers 365 days of the year. SDGFP will remove them as service for land owners.
- Non-lethal methods exist to reduce or eliminate beaver/human conflicts
- Beavers create habitat that helps store carbon and reduce threats of climate change.
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SD GFP did an inventory of beaver winter caches in the fall of 2023.
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We are supporting the BHNF Northern Hills District’s beaver dam analog construction project on Friday Sept 8th-9th. We ask folks to volunteer with the Forest Service to help build these dams. For more info: https://phas-wsd.org/event/volunteer-to-help-build-beaver-dam-analog-w-bhnf/
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South Dakota Game and Fish Department’s Management
2025 – We may again, in spring 2025, petition SDGFP Commission for rule making to make its’ management of beaver better. We normally do this at the May Commission meeting, which is normally held in Custer State Park.
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SDGFP Commission has set a beaver/trapping hunting season that is 12 months of the year statewide, except in the BHNF where it is 3 months and in non-Forest Service land where it is 6 or 12 months depending on where you are. The National Park Service does not allow hunting/trapping on it’s lands. National Wildlife Refuges may also not allow trapping, but may allow hunting
Goals below to change policy of SD GFP Commission.
1. We want SDGFP to do a management plan for beaver.
2. We want a moratorium set on trapping/hunting in the Black Hills National Forest.
3. Outside the Black Hills Fire Protection District there is 12 months a year beaver trapping season. We want a reduction in trapping season on all public lands, especially those with multiple use, wildlife or water shed objectives. We want reduced trapping/hunting months – or no months – of recreational/commercial trapping/hunting beaver on most public land.
t4. We want the 12 month trapping season on private and public land reduced to 5 months.
5. We support TNC’s beaver dam analog program and hope to see GFP identify habitat that beaver can survive in and/or help recover such habitat, especially in western SD.
6. We want SD GFP to adopt non-lethal methods of “conflict beaver” control when possible and translocate “conflict beaver” when possible.
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The beaver creates wonderful wetland, riparian & aquatic habitat. Great for birds! Great for keeping/storing water on the land and the habitat associated with them is good for carbon sequestration also.
Visit this letter to President Biden to learn about benefits: https://www.westernwatersheds.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Biden-Beaver-Letter.pdf
ACTION NEEDED with SDGFP – SPRING/SUMMER 2023
Visit this web page for more of an alert on beaver: https://phas-wsd.org/misc/
SDGFP Commission May 4th-5th-2023 link – it tells you actions to take to protect beaver: https://phas-wsd.org/event/sd-game-fish-and-parks-may-commission-meeting-thursday-may-4th-friday-5th-2023/
May 4th, 2023 at a Commission meeting at Custer State Park the SDGFP Commission reconsidered their horrible beaver trapping season which is 12 months every place in SD except Black Hills (where it is 12 months, 6 months and 3 months depending on where you are).
The Commission decided to make no change to the states beaver trapping rules – set for the next 2 years. However they indicated they might revisit the issue in December 2023 after they got results from a helicopter survey for beaver winter caches in fall of 2023.
.HOW TO COMMENT TO SDGFP COMMISSION
Commission meeting are normally on Thursday afternoons and Friday mornings.They are hybrid with Zoom option. Public testimony is normally allowed on Thursday afternoons at 2 pm CT or MT depending on time zone of the meeting. You need to send public comments in by midnight (either CT or MT depending on meetings location) the Sunday before a Thursday meeting, if you want them in the public record of that meeting, versus the record of the next meeting.
Written comments can be submitted at https://gfp.sd.gov/forms/positions/. To be included in the public record of the next meeting, comments must include your complete name and city of residence and meet the submission deadline of seventy–two hours before the meeting (not including the day of the meeting) (Usually Sunday night before midnight CT or MT depending on time zone of physical meeting) If you miss that deadline it goes to record of the next meeting. Unless you want to directly contact each Commissioner (no deadline) – https://gfp.sd.gov/commission/members/
You can testify at GFP meetings which are held in person and by Zoom, generally at 2 pm on the Thursday of the meeting, in time zone of the meeting.
Change Federal Lands Management – President Biden
Below find a link to a nationwide petition about protecting beavers on federal public (which is the short) and a longer more detailed letter (8 pages) signed by many environmental groups on same topic.
Please sign the petition & read the letter. The information in the letter will help you to become an advocate for beavers & write a short letter to SD GFP objecting to SD’s beaver trapping/hunting season.
On our events/deadlines/calendar page we always have dates of next Commission meeting with commenting instructions. SDGFP Commission meetings are normally the first Thursday & Friday of the month, except for holiday conflicts & they normally skip August.
Hopefully we will create an on-line petition for SDGFP sometime in April or May. We also need a campaign to contact federal land managers in SD.
SDGFP would be finalizing the 2024-25 beaver trapping hunting rule changes (if any) likely in July with proposals in May, but maybe proposals in either June or July would be finalization in Sept. If they do nothing, in SD we can petition for rule change – but might need to do by May or June Commission meeting. PHAS hopes to have an internal working meeting on this issue in spring
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Sign Nationwide Petition on Beaver to Biden before 5/31/23
Letter to Biden from environmental groups on 2/27/23 – 8 pages with lots of information on the issue:
https://www.westernwatersheds.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Biden-Beaver-Letter.pdf
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Links to recordings of our meetings on these topics in 2021 and 2022.
BEAVER
Prairie Hills Audubon’s March 31st, 2022 Zoom meeting Thursday: March 31st 2022, 6:30 pm Topic: Beavers and Beaver Dam Analogs – “Riparian Resilience in Western SD Streams” Speakers: Lori Brown, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) Vimeo link: https://vimeo.com/695026006
Prairie Hills Audubon Society’s (PHAS) June 2021 membership Zoom meeting Wednesday June 30th, 2021, 6:00 pm MT Historic meetings (Click on red text to link to the recording on Vimeo ) Topic: Working with beaver for the benefit of people, fish, wildlife and biological diversity Speaker: Michael M. Pollock of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is our speaker.
Past years SDGFP furbearer reports – learn about trapping statistics in our state include take of beaver and otters.
SOUTH DAKOTA GAME, FISH AND PARKS WILDLIFE DAMAGE MANAGEMENT
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OTTERS
Otters returned to the SD, thanks to Flandreau Sioux Tribe re-introduction to the Big Sioux River. We (PHAS)
have a campaign to recover otters & their habitat in SD. We objected to SDGFP decision to de-list the otter from the States threatened & endangered species list (Summer 2020) . We object to the SD otter hunting/trapping season. Otters are strongly associated with beavers & accidentally killed in beaver traps. Increasing beaver & beaver’s habitats helps otter. Otters are currently just east river or along the Missouri, but don’t go very far west. We want some stream/river segments west river improved to make them better otter habitat – such as fence off cattle next to the stream edges to recover riparian habitat, install beaver dam analogs or reintroduce beaver.
We want SDGFP and/or Tribes to reintroduce otter to suitable streams west river. SDGFP northern river otter management plan, specifically does not plan to reintroduce otters West River. So west River reintroduction may be up to the tribes, or to changing GFP’s mind.
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Link to recording of our meeting on this topic
APRIL 29th PHAS Meeting by Zoom (Historic – recording on Vimeo ) Topic: South Dakota’s River Otters, April 29, 2020, 6:30 PM Speaker: Silka Kempema of SD Game, Fish and Parks (GFP) Wildlife Diversity Program Link to recording of meeting: https://vimeo.com/588820006
Recording missed the first three slides, which included 1. the powerpoint’s title slide, 2. a slide called Mustelid – which had 4 characteristics listed (carnivore, long body, short legs, scent glands) and 3. a slide called Biology, which had 3 points.- (adapted to life in water, indicator of water quality, associated with beaver.)
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More information can be found on a historic PHAS blog page about river otters, but this is an out-of-date alert from when SDGFP was acting to remove river otters from the state’s threatened and endangered species list – maybe spring/summer of 2020 https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/4368376858740594690/6395956365739341594
