Dead beavers lead to dead birds, dead fish and a dead wood lot, according to Mark D’Arcy.

D’Arcy, a UNB alumnus, is protesting the deaths of 24 beavers. They were killed out of fears that their dams would flood roads being developed in the UNB wood lot.

D’Arcy and his wife Caroline set up tombstones at the bottom entrance to the university in memoriam of the beavers.

“(beavers)create and maintain water areas that fish habitats can collect in during periods of drought, that birds can congregate in … they’re essential for a healthy ecosystem,” he said.

The beavers were killed in underwater traps. The traps are designed to kill a beaver within five minutes. D’Arcy said the traps don’t always work as planned.

“There’s no way to guarantee the beaver’s going to be caught in the proper position. These are aquatic animals. They can survive easily up to twenty minutes in one of these body gripping traps,” he said.

Beavers migrate over long distances and can repopulate areas where they have been removed. D’Arcy said unless non-lethal methods of control are used, UNB will have to start an annual hunt to keep the wood lot’s beaver population down.

The university is only developing half of the wood lot. The other half is being conserved, but D’Arcy questions how these conservation areas are being managed.

“They piecemeal it … you’re going to have all these conservation areas isolated form each other and they’re going to be meaningless,” he said.

D’Arcy said the only things keeping UNB from developing the conservation areas are department of environment regulations about wetlands. He believes isolating the wetlands and killing beavers are the first steps in drying them out.

“In a development agenda … you don’t want wetlands. The less wetlands the more roads,” he said.

Dr. Graham Forbes is a forestry professor at UNB. He doesn’t think the university wants to destroy the wood lot’s wetlands, but agrees that the way conservation areas are set up is a problem.

“I for one was hoping for corridors, but also cores. You know larger blocks (of conservation areas),” he said.

Forbes was also critical of how the non-conservation areas are being developed.

“There are ways you can (develop) which are better for the environment. What we’ve seen so far is what’s typically called flat earth planning. You go in, level everything and plant a few trees afterward,” he said.

Forbes also thinks the university should have put more planning into the killing of beavers.

“When you want to remove animals from a population there’s certain basic information that needs to be known … you need to know how many beavers there are , how many need to be removed, and the likelihood of the population being negatively impacted,” he said.

“I don’t believe that information was available when they started killing them.”

UNB’s president and spokesperson were unavailable for comment.

D’Arcy said beaver deceivers are a good non-lethal way to prevent flooding. A beaver deceiver is made up of pieces of PVC pipe stuck through a dam to let water drain. He added that they have been used with a lot of success in Quebec’s Gatineau park.

“If there are other management practices being used with a lot of history and a lot of experience, and a lot of success, why isn’t UNB using them?” he asked.

Forbes agrees that beaver deceivers could be effective. He said the university probably killed the beavers because it’s cheaper and easier.

D’Arcy’s wife, Caroline Lubbe-D’Arcy, criticized the university for trying to keep the wood lot and the deaths of beavers out of the media. She said UNB is trying to make people think it is too late to change the fate of the wood lot.

“People are really mad. But a lot of people think there’s nothing that can be done. The powers that be decide and the little people just have to put up with it,” she said.

This article originally appeared in the Aquinian in 2007