Lovely footage of a beaver kit surveying his territory from Aigas a family home castle turned wildlife center near Inverness in the the Scottish highlands. The programe manager who posted it, Warwick Lister-Kaye, is a member of the save the free beavers of the River Tay site on facebook. I can’t embed the clip but if you click on the footage it should take you to a place you can watch it yourself.
Aigas is one of the private estates that keeps beavers. Paul Ramsy’s house at bamff is another to the south. There are several of these large, private estates that ‘brought back beavers’ to enrich their property and appeal to tourists. The feral free beavers of the river Tay (that are ruining the pristine attention span of the Official Beaver Trial located in Knapdale to the west) squeezed out from under some of their fencing or over a rock wall to try life on their own. It’s ironic because these homes helped prepare the scottish public for acceptance of beavers, and are now indirectly being blamed for ruining the trial. Go Figure.
There are a lot of good folk involved with the effort to save the free beavers of the River Tay. If you want to follow along you can join the facebook effort here. Many of them are not just wildlife-lovers but well-educated and working in related fields – I am constantly surprised to read a bit of research-based beaver gospel coming from the congretation. They have clearly won the first round and dissuaded officials from rounding up and trapping beavers for now. It’s not clear what the future will hold.
