BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

25/01/2007

Belarus Forestry Officials Demand Campaign Against Thriving Beavers

Belarusian officials on Thursday recommended rifles and increased body counts as the only way of dealing with the country's burgeoning beaver population, the Belapan news agency reported.

Elizaveta Korolevich, spokeswoman for the Belarus Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection (MNREP), said past government measures to control the aquatic rodents had failed miserably, despite years of trying.

Belarus straddles the Pripyat marsh network, Europe's largest wetland. The former Soviet Republic's beaver population has exploded in recent years, numbering an estimated 26,087 individuals in 2001, and 43,786 beavers as of the beginning of 2006, according to MNREP counts.

"Control efforts are not working," Korolevich said. "We need more severe measures."

A MNREP study recommended cancellation of a generation-old ban on beaver hunting, and allowing private hunters to kill 6,500 animals annually during a three-year period ending in 2010, and 4,000 beavers every year after that.

Beavers currently are fully protected under Belarusian legislation. Poaching is severely punished by the former Soviet republic's authoritarian government, which for practical purposes bans the ownership of fire arms.

Energetic beaver engineering in recent years has undermined dozens of kilometres of Belarusian roads and railways, and flooded hundreds of square kilometres of arable land, according to Belarus government estimate.

"This is no longer a case of protecting nature," said Dr. Petr Kozlo, a government biologist. "In some regions, beavers are actively destroying the ecology."

Past efforts to minimize beaver-caused property damage centred on trapping the beavers live, and transporting them to regions distant from inhabited areas.

"Trapping is insufficient," Korolevich said. "The ones we catch and remove swim back to where they were trapped."

Kozlo recommended a state campaign to promote the manufacture of beaver hats, as a means of creating economic demand to reduce beaver numbers in the country.

c 2007 DPA

Source:

http://www.playfuls.com/news_10_10654-Belarus-Forestry-Officials-Demand-Campaign-Against-Thriving-Beavers.html

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