Rachel D'Oro reported:
ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Let other Girl Scouts make bird feeders out of Clorox bottles and glue together little birch-bark canoes -- Troop 34 in Alaska is learning to trap and skin beavers...
Last spring [Spring 2003, this is an older story - Ben], about 10 members of the Fairbanks troop and their families helped catch two beavers using snare and lethal traps. The girls were taught how to find the animals' dens and how to lay the traps. Working under close supervision, the girls used knives to skin the beavers.
The troop had the pelts tanned and plans to make hats and mittens once a dozen hides are collected. The girls also want to cook beaver meat....
Officials at the Girl Scouts' New York headquarters did not return repeated calls. But in a Sept. 16 letter to PETA, spokeswoman Courtney Shore said the organization does not promote trapping or hunting and does not offer merit badges for those activities...
Shore noted that Troop 34, made up of 13 girls ages 10 to 12, participated after an invitation from the state Department of Fish and Game...
The state-run Take a Kid Trapping program is aimed at controlling flooding and other damage caused by an increasing number of beavers along the lower Chena River in Fairbanks. It is open to kids as young as 7.
Girl Scouts trap beavers as activists fume (AP via Deseret News, Rachel D'Oro, November 12, 2003)
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