This story is so upsetting. Two days ago I saw a comment on a scottish facebook page saying that farmers were shooting beavers. I wrote Paul Ramsay to find out what I could. He quickly wrote back that there had been several incidents and one farmer in particular bragging that he had “Shot 10”.
They were uncertain whether to go to the papers or not, because they feared a negative story could promote a backlash, resulting in more beavers dying..
Looks like the cats outta the bodybag.
Farmers shooting invading Tayside beavers
But it has now emerged that the bodies of 21 beavers have been discovered with gunshot wounds since the end of 2012.
Farmers and other landowners are suspected of being responsible for the slaughter and have been urged by conservationists
to adopt non-lethal methods to control the species.
The Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) has examined the bodies of 23 beavers in the Tayside area and concluded that two died in road accide
nts and the rest were shot dead.
At present, a licence is not needed to shoot beavers as they have no legal protection in the UK. However, possessing and moving a dead beaver is not legal without a licence.
Why on earth should we be surprised at this story? Just because beavers were extinct for 400 years, and scraped their way back from the bistory pile, doesn’t mean a farmer won’t shoot them now. I mean, they happily shoot rabbits, foxes, and badgers. So why wouldn’t they shoot beavers?
The very slanted article is the best answer I could have thought of to Paul’s question. No matter how responsibly you sit on the story and consider your cautions, its going to break soon enough anyway.
Better to make sure you’re in front of it.
Tonight is a full beaver moon. So when you’re looking up in ghostly wibderm think of our Scottish friends.
