Bern grapples with expanded beaver population

Just 12 years after reintroduction of the European beaver in an agricultural part of Bern, cantonal authorities have announced a plan to allow them to be shot in emergency cases where they are causing too much damage.

The measure was announced by the government Thursday as part of a “management” programme in the Grand Marais area of Seeland in the northern part of the canton, near the Jura and the city of Biel (Bienne).

It is meant to combat cases where beavers are damaging irrigation canals and flooding fields designated for crops.

The canton said its plan will follow strict legal, environmental, economic and technical guidelines.

But it immediately met criticism from animal groups and nature lovers.

“The beaver is in good company with such animals as bears, lynx and wolves,” wrote Ursula Zurbuchen in a comment on the BernerZeitung newspaper website, referring to campaigns to cull those animals because of concerns about livestock losses. “Switzerland is well known as a world champion for the shooting of protected animals.”

It was one of several critical remarks made by readers of the newspaper. Another correspondent talked of the plan as a “horror” given that the beaver was wiped out in Switzerland.

Hunted to extermination in Switzerland in the 19th century, the species, larger than the North American variety, has been protected in Switzerland since 1962 after being reintroduced in the early 1950s.

The population of the species, estimated around 1,600 last year, has more than quadrupled in the past 15 years, with groups located in various locations apart from Bern.

The WWF nature group was involved in reintroducing a group of beavers from Norway to Aargau in the 1960s.

No estimates of the numbers in Seeland were immediately available from Bern.

But Peter Lakerfeld, of the Pro Natura nature group, said there are 100 to 150 bevaers in the area, compared to just five in the mid-1990s.

The cantonal government said they account for a significant part of the overall Swiss beaver population and their “construction activities” are conflicting head on with the efforts of farmers in the area to grow vegetables and irrigate their crops.

Agriculture is a significant economic generator in the region.

The government noted there is no legal basis for compensating the farmers for their losses, which have mounted in the past two years and as a result, an “integrated management plan” is necessary.

Using their sharp teeth, beavers chew trees and use trunks and branches to dam water courses to build lodges for their families.

The cantonal culling programme aims to look at long-term damage rather than short-term impacts of the animals with certain areas given higher priority for action than others.

It has placed the various irrigation canals into red, yellow or green zones depending on their vulnerability to damage from the beavers.

While the plan recognizes the need to coexist with the animals, it authorizes wildlife officials to kill beavers in red zones where there presence is undesirable and when other efforts to minimize their impact have failed.

Shooting beavers "can only be the last possibiliy when all other avenues have failed," Lakerfveld told Swisster.

He reckoned it would only be possible in five or 10 years and should culling would have to be approved by Bern

Such cases would involve applications to the federal environment office, which can authorize the killing of protected species under certain conditions.

According to the government plan, these would be made on the advice of an advisory group involving hunting inspectors and representatives of the Swiss department of the protection of the beaver, Pro Natura and a commission for hunting and the protection of wildlife.