You Can Have Beavers, But Only If They're OUR Beavers

Way back in May 2008, I wrote a very short article about beavers being reintroduced to Scotland after 400 years.So you can imagine my surprise when I started following Paul Scott on twitter, who goes by the name of @Blair_Bookshop, and discovered that there were already beavers living in Scotland, wild and free. And that the exact same people who were monitoring the reintroduced beavers were trapping the wild beavers. I asked Paul to write a guest post on the forehead-slapping stupidity of it all:

Photo by flickkerphotos

If you go down to the woods today you're sure of a big surprise. If you go down to the River Tay today you're sure of an even bigger one.

The beaver reintroduction project over in Knapdale, which has so far cost the public purse somewhere in the region of £2,000,000 is starting to look like poor value for money now that Perthshire's best kept secret has spectacularly come slashing and gnawing its way out of the bag in the shape of a well established population of European Beavers in the river Tay catchment area. Cost to the taxpayer ? Free !

MI5 would be proud of the web of secrecy that has protected the free beavers in the area for many years, a web that was constructed in order to protect the flat tailed furry engineers of the waterways from the doom merchants of the anti-beaver brigade. This web of secrecy was torn apart in November of 2010 when it was announced that Scottish Natural Heritage, under pressure from The Scottish Rural Property and Business Association, intended to start trapping the free beavers of the area as 'a matter of urgency'.

Bafflingly, the announcement has been backed by the SNP environment minister Roseanna Cunningham. The environment minister has already received a large number of angry letters and emails on the subject, but has so far ignored all calls to halt the trapping of the free beavers. Among the excuses used by Miss Cunningham to defend her position is that beavers have been absent from Scotland for hundreds of years. An ironic statement when we remind ourselves that the cornerstone policy of the SNP is the restoration of an independent Scotland, a status that has also been absent for hundreds of years.

The Tweed foundation attempted to wade into the argument early on by claiming that beavers prevent salmon and trout from reaching spawning grounds but this claim falls flat when all the evidence points to the fact that fish numbers actually increase with the presence of beavers in the waterways. Salmon and trout managed to reach the spawning grounds when beavers were last here so why should there be any problem now ? Pesticides seeping into the water system from farmland is a far more obvious hazard to the health and well being of salmonids so it's possible that the Tweed foundation could make better use of their time scheduling a meeting with the Scottish Rural Property and Business Association to discuss that issue first.

The fight became centred on the Blairgowrie area in December of last year when a juvenile know locally as Eric was trapped by SNH on the River Ericht. To date, Eric is the only beaver to be captured despite the claim by SNH that the animals were to rounded up as a matter of urgency. SNHs timing of the trapping project has angered ecologists who have been quick to point out that the fragile local otter population, who are known to live side by side with the beavers and recycle deserted beaver lodges or burrows as new homes, are at the moment nursing young who will almost certainly perish should a lactating mother become trapped in one of the beaver capture devices.

Local businesses are also keen to see the key species left alone on the river as nature tourism in Perthshire is steadily gaining popularity as visitors flock to the area to catch a glimpse of Red Squirrels in the conifer woodland and pay a visit to the world famous Marge, the UKs oldest breeding Osprey who has been a summer resident at the Loch of the Lowes wildlife centre near Dunkeld for more than 20 years.

The plight of the free beavers prompted the Save The Free Beavers of the Tay facebook group which has gained over 400 members since it first started towards the tail end of 2010. As a result, The Scottish Wild Beaver Group was founded in January 2011. The group is made up by not only the country's foremost beaver experts, naturalists and relevant academics but also includes members of the local business community,local politicians and concerned members of the public from all walks of life.

The aim of the group is to offer SNH a sensible and mutually beneficial alternative to the trapping and/or culling of the estimated 100+ beavers who are living in an area that covers all points between Forfar in the east, Comrie in the west, Tentsmuir in the south and loch Tummel in the North.

All the scientific arguments have already been elegantly won by the group and public opinion is firmly on the side of Eric and his furry friends. A recent online survey gave a 90% result in favour of the beavers.The only stumbling block at the moment is SNH.


More detailed information and daily updates can be found at the Save The Free Beavers of the Tay facebook group and through twitter by following the #Freebeavers #FreeEric and #TayBeavers hashtags.The Scottish Wild beaver Group website is under construction and will be online in the next few weeks.

You can also read more on the subject of the fight to save the Tayside beavers in this short article in The Courier, and in this comprehensive one on the self willed land website.


My thanks to Paul for the article, and I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this campaign.