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Council Extends Hunting, Trapping Season on Bobcat, Beaver

A.J. Higgins
/
Maine Public
Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife votes to extend beaver and bobcat seasons.

State wildlife regulators are taking steps they say are designed to manage growing populations of bobcat and beaver.

Bobcats, they say, are showing up in areas of the state where they were once rarely seen, while beavers are working to take over areas claimed by humans. Opponents of the expanded hunting and trapping policy say that people are the real problem in the woods.

The rule change extends the bobcat hunting season statewide by a week in February and also adds two additional weeks to beaver trapping in many areas of the state. The 10-member Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Advisory Council unanimously agreed that the the extended seasons were needed to keep the animal populations in check.

Gunnar Gundersen, an advisory council member from Walpole, says he has heard his share of bobcat stories and complaints from people who want something done.

“A lot more people have chickens and ducks and all and a lot of people are complaining that there are more bobcats around and that they’re getting into their domestic animals and causing problems down towards the coast,” he says.

Council member Dick Fortier told members of the panel that he had heard from northern Maine residents who had lived in their communities for more than 40 years suddenly discover that beavers had moved in, and in some cases, taken over.

State wildlife experts say the season extensions are needed as part of an approach called adaptive management, which relies on trapping and hunting information and sightings.

IF&W Commissioner Chandler Woodcock says the department also considers anecdotal information from law enforcement officials and others.

“Our system of adaptive management works pretty well,” he says. “We’ve cut back on them in the past, we’re increasing some now. The bottom line for me is as commissioner is, are we managing it in an appropriate fashion for the species? We’re not managing it necessarily for people to take bobcat. That’s part of the process but are we manging it for the species. The species is healthy.”

But there are large and increasingly vocal numbers of Mainers who do not share the commissioner’s confidence in the department’s system for managing beavers and bobcats.

“Well I guess what I question is that they are saying that they have these estimates and these monitoring systems but they haven’t actually provided any of the data or specific numbers,” says Katie Hansberry, state director for the Humane Society of the United States.

Hansberry and others say the department’s policies for extending the seasons on beaver and bobcat are based on unproven assumptions about what effect the declining numbers of hunters and trappers are having on the population.

Karen Coker, co-leader of the recently formed grassroots wildlife advocacy group WildWatch Maine, agrees. She was among a large group of critics who showed up at an IF&W public hearing to oppose the plan.

“They really don’t have anything to stand on, the department does not have a current plan for either bobcat or beaver management, the plans they do have are 30 years old,” she says. “Wildlife ecology experts say that hunting or trapping season extensions should not be proposed or endorsed when there is no comprehensive monitoring or management plan in place.”

State IF&W officials say nearly 5,000 beaver were trapped last year and just over 230 bobcat were taken by hunters and trappers.