On the hunt for 'animal predators'
Marlene Bergsma
Jan 26, 2009
SOURCE: The Standard
There's a beaver menace in St. Catharines, but Stewart Frerotte is on the job.
The Niagara Falls trapper has caught and dispatched three of them, and he's not stopping until the tree-munching population is under control.
Beavers and humans could co-exist, Frerotte said, "except they do all this damage."
He describes the carnage: 20 pear trees in a farmer's creekside orchard, an expensive ornamental birch tree in a Port Dalhousie yard, two giant willow trees in Rennie Park.
Standing on a wooded slope near the bridge that connects Henley Island Drive to Henley Island, Frerotte points out the dozens of trees in just a small area -- all chopped at beaver height, with telltale tooth marks and pointed tops.
"If someone doesn't point it out to you, you wouldn't notice," said Frerotte, but with the underbrush flattened and snow-covered, there are stumps -- big and small -- everywhere you look.
"They are industrious little things," Frerotte said, and they don't hibernate. They are mostly nocturnal, but they are still active in the winter, mostly felling trees for food.
"If you had told me seven years ago I'd be trapping beavers in St. Catharines, I would have laughed at you," Frerotte said, "but all of a sudden, they've just blossomed. There's beavers everywhere, it seems."
Frerotte was hired by the St. Catharines parks and recreation department last spring after the damage was discovered in Rennie Park and there were reports of a large male beaver living in the area of Henley Island that was charging people.
Frerotte caught the territorial, aggressive male at Henley Island and two young beavers in Martindale Pond at Rennie Park.
He uses a conibear trap -- known as a "killing trap" -- which is set below the surface, near where a beaver is known to exit the water.
The spring-loaded metal is triggered by a beaver swimming through, and it snaps shut, immediately breaking the animal's neck or rendering it unconscious, Frerotte said.
"It dies within seconds. It is very humane. The only thing quicker is shooting them."
Frerotte lays his traps where he knows there is evidence of beaver activity, and there is no danger of humans or dogs accidentally tripping them. He checks them every day.
If he catches a beaver, he skins it and sells the fur, which is worth between $10 and $30 a pelt, depending on size and quality. It's sold at auction in Toronto, with most of the fur going to Russia or China where it is used for coats and hats.
The city pays him $50 per beaver, plus $15 a day. It took him eight days to catch the male, and four days to catch the juveniles.
He'll be setting more traps soon, especially in the area of the Green Ribbon Trail off Martindale Road, where Dalemere Estates residents Kevin and Renate Hodges recently reported partly chewed trees in danger of toppling onto pedestrians.
St. George's Coun. Peter Secord handed the Hodges' photos to acting parks and recreation director Jim Benson and asked him to get the trapper on the case.
Frerotte, who is a licensed trapper and a trapper education instructor, said he only sets traps where the city asks him to.
He has no way of knowing how many beavers live in St. Catharines, but he doesn't intend to eradicate them. The city's aim is to reduce the population.
"Just the ones that are doing the damage and in the areas where there are complaints," he said.
Frerotte knows there are people who will object to the killing of wild animals, and he has met people who confront him about the job he is doing.
But he is a retired Niagara Regional Police sergeant who is used to dealing with conflict.
He stays calm and explains "somebody has to do it."
"I don't get into arguments with them," said Frerotte, who learned how to trap from his father and grandfather when he was a boy. "They are entitled to their opinions. I can be rational. I am taking the excess population. It's a renewable resource."
Left unchecked, a burgeoning beaver population puts the animals at risk of starvation or disease, he said, and there are some diseases that can be passed to humans.
Frerotte traps from October to May, when the beaver pelts are thicker and more valuable, and which also coincides with the legal trapping season.
It's a hobby for Frerotte, one that doesn't make him much money after he's paid for his licences and equipment, but one that keeps him active and gives him a reason to get going every day.
"For 30 years I chased human predators and now I chase animal predators," he said, "the ones that are in conflict with people."
