M.D. giving incentive to control beaver population

The M.D. of Bonnyville has a new approach to handling beavers, who could be making springtime flooding worse.

The M.D. passed their new beaver policy on Wednesday which puts some onus on landowners to get rid of beavers on their property that aren’t affecting the municipality’s infrastructure.

There will be a cost of $100 to landowners who require M.D. assistance with beavers that aren’t harming infrastructure.

If beaver dams are causing problems with M.D. infrastructure, then they will come and take care of the problem.

“What this policy does is it handles two things. First, it still allows the M.D. to approach landowners and go on and take care of dams that are damaging our roads and bridges, culverts, that sort of thing,” said Reeve Greg Sawchuk on The Morning After.

“The second part of it, it allows for landowners, it puts a little bit of onus on them and incentive. So rather than having the M.D. and our resources, go out there and look after all of the issues, we’re incentivizing the landowner to go out there and maybe dispense with some of the beavers themselves,” he said.

“If the dam is solely on one person’s piece of property, it’s not harming MD infrastructure, it’s only causing an issue to that landowner, yes, there will be a charge of $100. It doesn’t cover the whole cost. Our administration said the whole cost is probably a couple hundred dollars or more. So we are subsidizing that still.”

Landowners will be paid $20 as an incentive to controlling the beaver population by applying through the M.D.

The applicant may claim up to 10 beavers per parcel of land, per year, that has a waterbody on it with a verifiable beaver population.

An incentive of $20 per beaver is applicable up to a maximum of $200.00 per year.