Beavers were finally given legal protection in Scotland on 1 May 2019, almost two decades after their return  to Scotland.  On the same day, the Scottish government issued licenses to certain landowners to allow them to kill beavers and remove their dams.

Up to the end of the year, 87 beavers are known to have been shot under this scheme not including the unknown number killed illegally.  Many people believe that the actual figure may be double the official one. At the last count there were around 450 beavers in Scotland so we are talking about one to two fifths of the known population. 

Meanwhile there are landowners and reintroduction projects across the UK who want beavers. These ecosystem engineers help with wetland restoration, flood prevention, nature and wellbeing and much more besides, and are in high demand.

It’s so helpful to settle in with an expert like Louise and really hear this story told all the way through. The great irony is that the key to making beavers protected was to allow them to be killed. That has been a tense bargaining chip since the very beginning. People needed an Offramp if things went wrong. But I’m not sure anyone ever decided that killing 20% of the population would be a good idea.

Beavers make complex wetlands by building and maintaining dams. The dams can be one hundred meters long or up to two meters high. In some landscapes, they can build several dozen dams in a couple of kilometres of waterway and have a really significant effect on the hydrology of an area, slowing the flow of water in times of flood and holding it on the land in times of drought.

They are agents of rewilding, creating abundant habitat for our beleaguered wildlife. Their dams and wetlands act as filters for agricultural run-off and other pollutants. They are both ecosystem engineers and a keystone species.

Beavers are trying to do the work for you, but they can’t do anything when you kill them.

45 licenses were issued to farmers and landowners in the course of 2019 and Scottish Natural Heritage, the public body responsible for our biodiversity,  also ran short training courses which effectively encouraged numerous individuals to shoot beavers on land belonging to license holders. In an incredibly short-sighted process, they seemed to jump straight to the last resort of killing before trying any other options to deal with the reported problems. 

So, given that there are some real problems with the beavers’ activities for these farmers, what could be done differently? The answer is that while it is difficult to accommodate these agents of rewilding in a highly artificial landscape, often it is not impossible and it is well worth the effort.

Are there any steps between letting a beaver do whatever they want and killing 87 of them?

There are a number of mitigation options, such as fencing, to keep the beavers out of particular areas. Dams can be adapted by having a pipe installed through them as a permanent leak or an electric fence run along them to limit their height. Where this works well it enables the beaver family to stay put and accept a smaller pond. Flood-banks can be protected with wire, and culverts can be protected with fencing boxes called  beaver deceivers. Valued trees may be individually wrapped with wire or painted with a mixture of paint and glue, and sections of woodland can be fenced. 

Mitigation can provide brilliant solutions that bring benefits to all concerned but as yet not many farmers have much faith in them. The government should be doing all they can to encourage mitigation before resorting to licensed shooting but instead they have approached this the other way around, by allowing widespread shooting first and then trying to retrofit some mitigation in a few places. 

Louise goes through and lays it on the line stone by stone. There are things that can be done, there are reasons to do them.

Beavers, apart from bringing immense interest and joy, and attracting tourists,  can save us humans vast amounts of money, although this is entirely over and above their intrinsic right to be here in their old territories – places from which our ancestors trapped them out for their pelts. 

Well sure, beavers can help us if we stop hurting them. But that sounds kind of REASONABLE Louise, didn’t you know that with beavers  people like to take the irrational solution?