That beaver death rate wasn’t just shocking to us. It caught the attention of many conservationists in the UK. This time from the Spectator which. since the 1800’s has written about politics and happenings giving it the odd distinction of making it is the oldest weekly magazine in the world.

After the flood: The age of the beaver

Restoring biodiversity and protecting our bucolic woodlands will be a focus for farmers and those who dictate how subsidies are spent over the coming decades.

The greatest of these is the Eurasian Beaver. Ecologists unanimously assert that temperate river ecosystems can only be considered whole and healthy if they have beavers living throughout their length. Great efforts are being made by an enlightened few to reintroduce this noble and ingenious rodent back into our waterways. Even so, last year 87 beavers were killed on the River Tay by local farmers who were protecting subsidy motivated crops on low lying flood-plains. This equates to 20 per cent of Scotland’s total beaver population.

A death rate like 1/5 gets attention. And it should. When Scotland announced it’s original plan to catch ALL the tay beavers years ago they were hampered by an extremely faulty count. I’m hoping this statistic used the same math and there are way more beavers than they realize. I’m so happy it’s getting noticed that I won’t even complain that they used castor canadensis instead of fiber for this photo. The European beaver just isn’t as beautiful with it’s piggish snout. Our beaver of course boasts the nose shot as the most perfect.

We need a nation that is built to withstand the flood of future pandemics and the strain of climate change. Beaver dams provide towns and villages with robust safety from flooding and from the strain of droughts. They are far more effective than the concrete culverts we erect. These ecosystem engineers manage water flow in a way councils could only dream of.

It all comes down to this. Beavers could make things better if we could just stop killing them long enough to notice. Ain’t that always the kicker? Shh this is my favorite part.

Perhaps the beaver could be the symbol of an invigorated United Kingdom that emerges from the deluge of coronavirus to stem the flood of threats that the 2020s hold for us all. We have all come to appreciate nature more during the lockdown so now is the time to begin rewilding our gardens, our lives and even our economy. Not only will beavers help farmers across our island to manage their rivers but they inspire the kind of creative and proactive risk management that our politicians will need to embody in order to survive the coming storm.