The Yukon government’s decision to dispatch a beaver family that was setting up its homestead in a culvert along the Alaska Highway was unfortunate but understandable, according to the Yukon Conservation Society.

“We wish it didn’t happen,” Lewis Rifkind, the organization’s mining analyst, said in an interview Friday. “It’s regrettable.

“But at the same time, we recognize that essential infrastructure has to be protected and we’re all dependent on the Alaska Highway, whether for travel or even just to get food into town.”

Five beavers were shot by conservation officers on July 25.

Their dam, across the road from the Meadow Lakes Golf and Country Club, threatened to block a culvert.

If fully blocked, it could wash out the highway, Doris Wurfbaum, a Department of Highways and Public Works spokeswoman, has said.

While the department obtained a permit from Environment Yukon to trap the beavers, after public outcry, staff decided to remove its traps and leave dealing with the problem in conservation officers’ hands.

Last year, the department was granted eight permits to trap beavers.

“In the future, we do hope that they explore other options because that particular culvert area is probably going to see, maybe not next year, maybe the year after, beavers move back in,” said Rifkind. “They look for a good habitat.”

But Wurfbaum said the department has previously tried using a humane preventative measure, involving cone devices, but the attempt had been unsuccessful.

The Association for the Protection of Fur-Bearing Animals also offered, too late, to come to Whitehorse and build an exclusion fence at no cost.

Such a device aims to block beavers from damming the culvert while continuing to allow water to flow through.

Though these beavers are no more, the association has said its offer to send staff to Whitehorse and teach the department how to construct these flow devices in the future still stands.

At Meadow Lakes, the beavers have been both a novelty and a nuisance over the years.

Initially, there were just two. Then the couple had two kits. This year, two more were born.

Owner Jeff Luehmann had asked before about sterilizing the beavers, but conservation officers weren’t in favour.

“I can understand the reasoning,” he said. “That would get very expensive.”

Luehmann has had to build weirs, unplug culverts and put up electric fences in an attempt to discourage their productivity.

“Beavers are a force of nature,” Rifkind said. “We have to recognize that they do change the landscape, and when you get into a situation where they can very negatively affect human infrastructure, something has to be done.”

He said someone called the society a few years ago to complain about beavers gnawing trees along the Millennium Trail.

“We’re a wilderness city,” Rifkind said. “We’ve plunked ourselves in the middle of the wilderness. We see these interactions, often negative ... because we’ve imposed ourselves on our wilderness.

“We do what we can to minimize our impacts, but we’re going to see these conflicts.”

See letter.