Comments due on SDGFP Beaver Action Plan July 2nd, 2025

Comments due on SDGFP Beaver Action Plan July 2nd, 2025

Here is a link to the plan.

https://phas-wsd.org/wp-content/uploads/beaverActionPLan-May_2025_Commission_Book_-2-1.pdf

You normally need to post comments to the SDGFP Commission public comment page or postal mail to SDGFP staff, but the comment directions have not be posted yet, I have just been told the written comment deadline for staff review. This will be posted on their Management Plan web page – under plans up for revision –, once they get around to posting it. https://gfp.sd.gov/management-plans/

However the SDGFP Commission takes action to approve Action Plans, so likely the Commission will also consider this Plan at their July 10-11th  meeting, so go to the Commission’s July meeting and hearing pages for those comment opportunities – it will be on Sunday night 7/6/25 for written comments and Thursday 10th for spoken comments.

TALKING POINTS

The plan is good in that it allows for a moratorium on beaver hunting/trapping in the Black Hills.

It is inadequate in that it does not address needed reductions in beaver hunting/trapping season outside the Black Hills especially  in west River SD, which we need in at least key drainages to facilitate northern river otter reintroduction and because beaver help store ground and surface water. Otter are strongly associated with beaver and if they are both present, when you trap beaver you also catch otter as incidental take. Water sets drown the trapped beaver/otter.

Western SD might have water supply problems in the future and folks are proposing a .5-3 billion dollar water transfer pipeline from the Missouri.  Beaver engineering stores and saves water in western SD (if allowed to happen) & thus minimizes the need for human engineering to transfer that water from Missouri  back to west.  Also other public lands in western SD have inadequate beaver supplies and need their own beaver recovery plans.

Beaver provide for lots of values. Go to our beaver and otter web pages for information on that.

Watching of beaver and river otters is fun.  Watching them must be recognized as an important form of recreation, at least as important as hunting/trapping them. Trapping  might be primarily  a commercial action done for revenue from the sale of furs & may not be primarily a recreation action. However, it is constantly justified as outdoor recreation and we are told we must restart trapping for recreation’s sake.  Object to this and insist that watching them is important recreation.