No Beaver Drowning in Connecticut

Thomas Marsh, First Selectman
Town of Chester
Chester, CT 06412-1200860-526-0013, ext. 202860-526-0004 (fax)

firstselectman(at)chesterct.com

Dear Mr. Marsh, 

I have just learned that your town of Chester is reportedly in the process of setting Conibear and/or leg-hold (body-gripping) traps in a local waterway in order to drown families of beavers.

The body-gripping traps used by trappers to capture and kill beavers cause immeasurable suffering. Death by drowning is also extremely cruel—the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) condemns it in its "2000 Report of the AVMA Panel on Euthanasia" (Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 218(5):696). It takes up to 24 minutes for a beaver to drown. Imagine the beavers' terror as they struggle and fight against the body-gripping traps and suffer from lacerations and internal injuries. Such trapping is a cruel and ineffective way to resolve any perceived problem with beavers.

PETA and several other animal protection organizations have contacted you and asked your town to pull the traps and explore effective, humane beaver-control alternatives. This requests were denied.

Trapping, shooting, or otherwise removing beavers from the area of concern is only a short-term solution and will not adequately address the long-term problems associated with beaver activity in the Chester area, with its apparently abundant waterways and large beaver populations. As long as this area remains attractive or accessible to beavers, more animals will simply move in from surrounding areas to fill the newly vacant niches, resulting in a perpetual and vicious trap-and-kill cycle.

Please pull these traps immediately and accept PETA's offer to work with the town to develop and implement an effective, humane beaver-control program that everyone can live with, including the beavers.

With kind regards,