A county in South Carolina is encouraging citizens to kill beavers and cut off their paws in their natural habitat to ‘stop flooding in the area.’ The County is even incentivizing citizens to cut off the animals’ front paws, which they can exchange for payment of $100.
The Horry County Stormwater Department’s Beaver Bounty program is a heartbreaking and cruel initiative that aims to reduce the number of beaver dams in the County by asking the citizens to murder them. The program’s website says that the program is not to eliminate beavers but to “effectively reduce their numbers to minimize the damage inflicted by the dams that they create.”
Beavers construct dams to create shelter for themselves and their families. Beavers are unique and incredibly smart animals who can make their dams out of sticks, branches, rocks, and other materials. Beavers dams can even help with flooding and erosion. They are not aggressive animals and typically sleep during the day and are active at night.
The County heartlessly wrote on its page that it will “only accept the front paws of the beaver for collection purposes. The paws shall be frozen and kept in a zip lock plastic bag.”
In Defense of Animals reported that when one of their volunteers called the Stormwater department for details about how to kill the beavers, Chelsea Cogliano, the Horry County Stormwater Department’s Watershed Planner, said that people could shoot them or “however else you want to get the beaver.” When asked about removing the beavers’ front paws, Cogliano said that people can “cut them off somehow – with a knife or saw.”
Once residents murder the animals, cut off their paws, and bring them into the office, they will be given a ‘$100 bounty’ for the set of paws. The program is ongoing, with no signs of stopping anytime soon.
In Defense of Animals is encouraging people to contact Thom Roth, the Head of the Horry County Stormwater Department, and Chelsea Cogliano, Horry County Stormwater Department’s Watershed Planner, to urge them to cancel this gruesome program!
This article by Hailey Kanowski was first published by OneGreenPlanet on 7 August 2022. Lead Image Source : Chase Dekker/Shutterstock.
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