from Sunday Herald, 27 February 2011
The impassioned battle over the future of beavers in Scotland has turned nasty. Three have allegedly been killed, angry accusations are flying, and a formal complaint has been lodged with the European Commission.
A campaign headed up by a landowner to stop the government’s wildlife agency, Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), from trapping beavers in Tayside is winning widespread support, and is threatening to derail plans to clear the area of the dam-building, tree-gnawing mammals.
But campaigners now fear that other landowners or farmers may be taking the law into their own hands and killing the beavers. According to unconfirmed reports, two have been shot and one caught in a snare on Dean Water, upstream of the village of Meigle near Blairgowrie in Perthshire.
SNH says there are up to 20 wild beavers living along rivers in a 50-square kilometre area between Aberfeldy, Forfar, Dundee and Perth. Local people, however, think there could be 50 or more.
Their origins are also hotly disputed. Some say they are descendants of animals that escaped from a wildlife park a decade ago, while others allege they have been deliberately released by private owners.
Beavers used to be native to Scotland, but were hunted to extinction more than four hundred years ago. They were killed for their furs, which are soft and waterproof, and for the oil they secrete.
A government-backed trial to reintroduce beavers is under way at Knapdale in Argyll. But at the same time over in Tayside, SNH has launched an attempt to remove them, on the grounds that they were not legally introduced.
Since SNH began trapping beavers in December, however, it has only managed to capture one. Named Erica by local people, she has been given to Edinburgh Zoo, though is not on display.
A campaign against SNH to “save the free beavers of the Tay” has been launched on the social networking website, Facebook, and has gathered over 800 supporters. The campaign has also been backed by the local newspaper, the Blairgowrie Advertiser, which is helping to distribute ‘save the Tay beaver’ t-shirts.
Unusually, the campaign is being led by local landowners, Paul and Louise Ramsay, whose family has owned the 13,000-acre Bamff estate near Alyth in East Perthshire since 1232. They keep beavers in an enclosure on their estate and helped set up the Scottish Wild Beaver Group to oppose SNH’s plans.
Paul Ramsay accused SNH of bowing to pressure from the landowning and farming lobby to get rid of the beavers. “They are so blinkered, so desperately narrow minded, I feel that we must fight against them very hard,” he told the Sunday Herald.
He said that he had been told on good authority about the three wild beaver deaths, though he admitted that they couldn’t be proved. The killings were “common knowledge” locally, he claimed.
Ramsay argued that the killing or trapping of the Tay beavers was illegal. He has filed a formal complaint to the European Commission in Brussels arguing that they are protected under the Habitats Directive.
Ramsay also accused SNH of encouraging landowners to get rid of the animals. “It is really wrong of SNH to apparently give tacit approval to landowners to kill beavers when it is against European law,” he said.
But SNH described his allegation as “appalling”, and insisted that the Tay beavers had no legal protection. “If the owners of private beaver collections had kept their beavers in captivity in the first place we would not be in this unfortunate situation,” claimed an SNH spokesman.
When the former Scottish Executive previously refused permission for a trial reintroduction of beavers in 2005 it said that they would have legal protection. But according to SNH, subsequent advice suggested that this was not the case for the Tay beavers.
The Scottish Rural Property and Business Association backed SNH, arguing that beavers could damage woodlands and cause flooding. “To leave feral beaver on the loose in Tayside would undermine the five-year pilot study currently ongoing in the Knapdale Forest in Argyll,” said the association’s chief executive, Doug McAdam.
The Scottish Wildlife Trust and Edinburgh Zoo, which are running the beaver trial in Knapdale, declined to comment on the fate of the Tay beavers. “The ultimate decision on the future of unlicensed wild beavers in Scotland is the responsibility of the Scottish government,” said a trust spokeswoman.
The Scottish government agreed with SNH’s interpretation of the legal position. “These beavers are being recaptured as they are of unknown origin and were released into the countryside without any form of consultation,” said a government spokeswoman.
The Scottish Rural Property and Business Association has being doing more damage to the Scottish ecosystem than a herd of woolly mammoths.
Any time you plant monoculture forest, farm to the edge of streams and ignore the necessity of varied habitats to maximize biodiversity, you are definitely not helping.
Yes, beavers do cut down trees, but the natural bankside species are prone to coppice or even sprout from fallen trunks, increasing the supply of what the SRP&B seems to think most precious, food for deer. The increase in insect life in the beaver ponds provides shelter and resting places for salmonids (trout, salmon and relations) especially their young. A series of dams on a stream radically effects the water flow, dropping silt out, regulating temperature, and maintaining flow during drought, while reducing erosion and downstream flooding in heavy weather.
If the SNH and the SRP&BA would actually measure the effects of the wild beavers, rather than dismissing them, maybe they would learn something from them, certainly more than they will learn from the tragically flawed trial at Knapdale, a place without any salmon at all.
Just a final thought. Aren't scientists meant to measure, record and then conclude? All I have read from the SNH is that the Tay beavers do not have permission to live, therefore they should be killed.
Posted by: jeremy Goodwin | 27 February 2011 at 01:45 PM
I think that man needs to take a good look at one's self and give themselves a good shake, and admit to the fact that they are destroying the world we live in, not just fore us but for every thing that lives in the land, our air,land and rivers along with the wild habitat of Animals and natural beauty, that we promote to the world. It is dun in the name of greed and ignorance by a bunch of blackguards that say that they one the land, and ignorance in government.
Posted by: David Swan | 27 February 2011 at 11:00 AM