Beavers: Born To Be Wild

Photo by flickkerphotos

A victory, of sorts!

Four months after starting a scheme to trap all the free beavers that live Tayside, Scottish Natural Heritage have decided to call time on the whole thing.

You may remember from Paul Scott's guest post that SNH had been embarrassed by the discovery of free, wild beavers living not far from an area in which they were spending money to, erm, re-introduce free, wild beavers to Scotland.

They decided that having wild animals out of their control in the countryside of Scotland was not something they were prepared to put up with, and so set about trapping the wild beavers which weren't their wild beavers.

And they caught one.

Yes, one. In four months. Local residents set up a campaign group and kept an eye on the beavers, keeping their location secret in case nefarious government agents got hold of the information.

Now, SNH have decided to save face and, for the moment at least, allow the wild beavers to remain wild. They're claiming that the trapping campaign was just "a trial" and now that that's at an end (cough, cough) they'll take stock of the situation.

SNH want to see if conditions are right for wild beavers to live in Scotland. I say that if there's already a group of free, wild beavers flourishing in the country, then conditions are right!