One western Ontario city is getting in the spirit of Father Time by spending almost $150,000 draining the pond where “beloved” beavers have been residing for years.
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Plans to extinguish beaver bunnies have angered residents of Kenora, and even Mayor Adam Claude Elliott (a.k.a. “Mak.”) hasn’t been shy about his displeasure. “This is not something I’m going to sit back and let happen,” he recently told the Toronto Star. “Whatever rules are put in place, they’re going to be kept in place. Beavers will be back. Period.”
Why must these keep causing issues for these industrious beavers? Metrolinx, the public transit agency charged with delivering the new Toronto-Windsor-Amherstburg light rail project, says it has been plagued by plumbing issues and that one beaver had been lumbering into a water main that cuts through a $99.3 million subway expansion.
So, Metrolinx seized upon one relatively simple solution to alleviate that problem: draining the pond where beavers tend to sunbathe. It didn’t help, however, that the beavers learned from their costumed beloved: They moved to a nearby beaver pond, which is still filled with vegetation.
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Beavers aren’t exactly celebrated by the species’ cheery cuteness, however, which has made Metrolinx’s plan to “mop up” the pond by Aug. 10 one of the most controversial projects ever undertaken. Last month, thousands of people signed an online petition calling for Metrolinx to return the beavers to their old home, but as this video demonstrates, even the railway authority is doing its best to keep beavers and their job well-understood:
While several theories have emerged about why beavers are causing so much trouble for the city, it is somewhat clear that if Metrolinx won’t move the beavers back to their old home, the company has no interest in dealing with the only platonic friends it has ever truly had. That’s perhaps another reason why Metrolinx has been accused of being “arrogant.”